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grljool Pubatafion No. 2r 

Nonpmhtr 19ia 



Elementary Adult Education 



First Annual Report 

Department of Immigrant Education 

and 

Elementary Evening Schools. 



1916-1919. 



Los Angeles City School District 

School Publication No. 27 
October. 1919 






Vi, of f. 

DEC 6 1919 



g 



Supt. Albert Shiels, 

Los Angeles, California. 

My dear Dr. Shiels : Herewith is submitted the story of the 
work of the Department of Immigrant Education and Elementary 
Evening Schools since its beginning three years ago. The narrative 
is written in the hope that it may formulate some slight outline of 
the immense task as the department has conceived it, some expres- 
sion of the point of view from which the work has been undertaken, 
some accounting of the comparatively tiny portion actually accom- 
plished out of the stupendous whole. 

Yours very truly, 

RUBY BAUGHMAN, 

September 25, 1919. Supervisor. 



included in the department because they formed at the time the 
chief bulk of the work with adults. A few sporadic experiments 
outside their limits with special day time and evening classes had 
alreiidy indicated the lines along which development might be 
pursued. 

Educational specialists and students in the general process 
of democratization of our population had agreed that the old time 
night schools, meeting at a set hour, afforded opportunity only to 
that small fraction of our foreign population which was ambitious 
enough, energetic enough, economically free enough to fit into the 
very rigid machinery of those schools. They were opportunity 
schools for the few. They assumed too little responsibility for the 
arousing of ambition, — the stirring of a completer sense of obliga- 
tion in the adult members of the community. They offered no 
freedom of adjustment in time or subject matter to fit peculiar needs 
of different groups. 

In agreement with this concensus of opinion from persons who 
had formed it out of actual experiment in which theory had been 
tested by practice, this department has undertaken the well-nigh 
impossible task of devising means of placing luithin reach of ail 
groups of both American and non-American persons adequate 
facilities for becoming familiar with American social, economic, and 
civic institutions and ideals. For this socializing process it has been 
discovered to be necessary to depart from the concept of evening 
school classes for adult foreigners as those classes had been organ- 
ized all over the United States previous to the last five years. 

One of the pioneer movements in the whole country toward a 
broader concept of our obligations to the immigrant was the estab- 
lishing of what is commonly called the diploma method of naturali- 
zation. This plan, originated in one of the elementary evening 
schools which organized the first naturalization class in the city, 
has been further developed in an Evening High School class to the 
point where it not only secures the admission of foreign born per- 
sons to citizenship in the United States, but tries to prepare them 
for an intelligent use of that citizenship after it has been acquired. 

The great bulk, however, of foreign born population is separ- 
ated from any democratization process by the deep gulf fixed by their 
ignorance of the English language. To this immense number the 
public school owes a flexible, attractive, neighborly, educational op- 
portunity. To this end the small intimate night school has been 
placed close to the compact alien groups ; classes have been organ- 
ized in industrial plants of various sorts in order that the educa- 
tional process may fit closely into the needs of the workers' life; 
classes for house mothers in labor camps have been organized, meet- 



ing usually in the afternoon and dealing with subjects of funda- 
mental interest to mothers and housewives ; classes meeting in school 
houses, morning, afternoon or evening, offer to the foreign women 
who find the school house a convenient place of meeting all of the 
public school facilities in cookery, sewing and other household arts. 
This new adult education designed to meet the needs of the Amer- 
ican-born as well as the foreign-born, accepts the obligation to offer 
"training in any subject useful to citizens at any time and in any 
place best suited to the convenience of those citizens ;" it assumes, 
furthermore, the obligation to arouse a sense of need in those per- 
sons who are not aware of it. 

There are two viewpoints concerning the method and manner 
of development of classes and schools for adults. The one con- 
templates a wholesale proceeding, — a blanket arrangement, the 
organization of a large number of schools and classes, and the 
assignment of a large number of teachers to those schools, in the 
hope that out of the large number some portion of the work will 
prove sufficiently vital to become permanent. The other viewpoint 
involves an analysis of the neighborhood situation, an assignment 
so far as possible, of individual workers especially adapted to the 
peculiar task of that district, a careful adjustment from time 
to time of all plans and procedure to the social conditions. The 
first method of development makes at any given moment a more 
brilliant showing especially when the initial steps are preceded by a 
publicity campaign which draws students into school in great num- 
bers and as quickly loses them. The second is ahvays in a process 
of construction or reconstruction; it suffers all the vicissitudes and 
variations of human adult life because it is based deliberately on the 
needs, desires and changes in fortune of the human ad^dt life it 
attempts to serve. 

The work of the past three years in the department of adult 
elementary education has, therefore, followed the second path ; first, 
because of the conviction in the minds of most of its workers that 
such a plan of approach and procedure is most valid ; second, because 
the department has been compelled to maintain a maximum of activ- 
ity at a minimum ^expense. It has been a financial necessity to see 
that each project, large or small, be a going institution in the social 
sense. 

This viewpoint involves also a different attack upon the problem 
of establishing right relations between the adult class and its patrons. 
It abandons entirely the loud type of publicity. 

The simple, natural and hence subtle manner of approach, the 
non-mechanical, informal, un-card-indexed, and almost casual qual- 
ity of development is illustrated by the following bit of narrative 
written by the teacher of "the basement class." 



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"A student of one of the Evening Schools was an employee in the 
Pullman Car Cleaning Department. It was she who told us that some of her 
fellow-workers were anxious to learn the English language. For one reason 
or another, none of these women was able to attend evening school : they were 
willing to give half of their noon hour to study if they had a teacher to 
help them. We organized a class for them under a volunteer teacher. Dur- 
ing the first few lessons little progress was made. Everyone was afraid 
to show how little she knew, but by dint of much encouragement from 
'Teacher,' and the 'Boss,' we finally gathered a class of eight women, who 
found the work so well worth while that they came faithfully. 

"Most of the foreign-born men who worked in the same department 
with these women had a very small knowledge of the English language. 
We tried to interest them in the noon class, but as they were given only 
forty-five minutes for lunch, the time was too short. However, most of 
them spent the last fifteen minutes watching the progress of the women. 
They soon saw how quickly they would be able to learn the English language 
with proper teaching. The foreman and leader among these men said he 
believed 'Education does more good than anything else.' He is giving a 
liberal education to his two sons and is anxious to help his men here in 
America. He watched the noon class with much interest, and soon asked if 
it would be possible to send a teacher to the 'camp' for evening classes with 
his men. The 'camp' is a group of neighboring houses all occupied by 
workmen engaged in Pullman Car cleaning. When they found that a 
teacher would be provided, the men under the leadership of the foreman, 
went to work with a will. They cleared the only available room in their 
camp, which was the basement of one of the houses. It was cleaned until 
it shone, fresh new paper was put on the walls, and the floor covered 
with rugs. The men themselves built tables, chairs, and benches, and every 
convenience that they could think of was installed. Although their work 
during the war period has been very heavy, owing to the extra work of 
cleaning troop trains, these men have persisted. Seven of them have not 
missed an evening since the opening of the class, except when working 
"overtime." 

Except for the more or less casual announcement of the open- 
ing of the night schools in the English and to some extent in the 
non-English newspapers of the city, no publicity campaign was con- 
ducted in the fall of 1917-18, and of 1918-19. Investigations, local 
and national, had revealed the fact that about 80 per cent, of actual 
attendants had been attracted to the school through the word of 
friends, neighbors or acquaintances. A shockingly greater percent- 
age of entrants, attracted by whatsoever means, failed to remain 
in classes. On the other hand, it is always entirely possible to 
discover near many of the schools — ^sometimes within hailing dis- 
tance — persons who have never heard of their existence. The proper 
sort of publicity seemed, then, to be this : a reasonably social, effec- 
tively administered night school organization which should com- 
mand the respect of its neighborhood ; teachers peculiarly fitted 
and particularly trained for night school work ; an adaptation of 
subject matter, and method to the actual needs and desires of the 
patrons of the school ; a quiet, systematic, continuous, cordial inter- 
pretation of the night school to its conmiunity by the principal and 



teachers. Concerning the success or faihire of this noiseless variety 
of pubhcity, it is difficult to arrive at a conclusion. If attendance 
is the sole criterion, the first month's record of each year tells a 
sad story of failure, as the appended tables show. The record for 
the remaining months seems to prove that the schools, slow in gain- 
ing momentum, maintained a far better general average of attend- 
ance for the year. 

The record of attendance, however, can never show the actual 
social service done by any school in any community. The discovery 
of some tangible measuring unit for this most intangible of values 
and service is one of the tasks to which we must set our hands in 
the next decade. Any interpretation, furthermore, of the facts 
arraigned for or against any variety of publicity campaign, or 
indeed any other facts during these two years, must take into intel- 
ligent account the following stupendous odds against which the adult 
classes have struggled for their existence in a period of general 
social unrest, — the tension of a war-and a post-war-period ; ( 1 ) the 
mistrust, not to say distrust, of many foreign groups, due to a 
lack of accurate information concerning passing events or suffcient 
confidence in American institutions; (2) the freakish movements 
of the labor market (the entire population of a labor camp is 
removed and replaced in less than a week) ; (3) the disturbances 
due to strikes and rumors of strikes in various industries; (4) the 
rapid increase in opportunity for over-time work; (5) the various 
large and small economic distresses, that neutralize the value of these 
rapidly fluctuating increases in hours and in wages; (6i the removal 
from the school and from the district of large squads of drafted 
men (one elementary evening school sent 55, counting its principal) ; 
(7) the consequent absorption into industries of the remaining mem- 
bers of the family; (8) the mental and physical strain of sending 
the young man from all of our families into the dangers of war- 
fare; (9) the pressure of every variety of war activity upon the 
hours of a day that were one time leisure hours; (10) the general 
inability of our entire population, American-made or alien, in these 
times of war, to settle itself to the routitie of so prosaic a business 
as attendance at educational centers; (11) the deadly havoc of the 
epidemic and post-epidemic periods; (12) the complications of a 
post-epidemic and a post-war social adjustment. 

As a contribution to the solution of the general problem of 
attendance, the following figures are of interest : 

10 



Average Attendance — Elementary Evening Schools. 

Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June 

1916-17 7h2 784 851 827 774 868 789 730 611 520 

1917-18 700 865 970 800 910 898 894 882 856 810 

1918-19 595 7S7 * * * 614 702 922 907 892 

It must be understood tbat the figures in these tables repre- 
sent technical attendance reported as required by the Cahfornia 
state law : namely, on the basis of two hours' attendance at class 
five nights a week, reported in minutes. They are in no wise a 
statement of the number of persons. — actual human creatures, — in 
actual attendance at classes meeting for the length of time or at the 
hour or for the number of days a week adapted to the needs of that 
class. At a factory class meeting for thirty minutes during the 
noon hour four persons must be in attendance to show a technical 
attendance of one person ; yet supplies and equipment must be pro- 
vided for four persons. On one date chosen at random, the technical 
attendance of 894 represented 2074 persons attending some activity 
of some adult class. Against the wasting of valuable time and 
energy of teachers and consequently of students on meaningless 
computations of this sort in a constructive period like the present 
post-war era no amount of professional protest has been able to 
prevail up to date. 

Concerning the figures of 1918-19. September, October, and 
December, it must be noted in the first place that the figures are 
from only 19 schools as compared with 26 schools of the previous 
year. The sessions, furthermore, were irregular and interrupted by 
the epidemic of influenza, by four rainy evenings and three school 
holidays. There were, as a matter of fact, only seven weeks all told 
in the school sessions between September and February, under con- 
ditions which do not make for excellent adult attendance. It is 
to be noted also that the second month of 1918-19, despite all the 
handicaps mentioned above, closely approximates the figures of pre- 
ceding years. 

The permanent quality of the attendance and the stability of 
the quiet type of publicity is best shown in the fact that the schools 
at the end of the demoralization of the quarantine period started 
ofif in February with an attendance so close to their closing figures 
at the beginning of the quarantine, and in the fact that the attend- 
ance line begins at once its gradual steady climb upward. 



* No sessions. Influenza epidemic. 

11 



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This graph charts the annual attendance for the past three years, esti- 
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registers. 







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12 



Persons who are accustomed to interpret education in terms of 
cost per pupil and to estimate social values in sums of money 
expended, will find interesting the following figures concerning the 
salary cost per month during the three years of attendance quoted 
above : 

Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June 

1916-17 $5283 $5550 $5561 $5549 $5537 $5692 $5806 $5824 $5474 $5315 

1917-18 5778 6858 6928 6722 6563 6193 5780 5986 5811 5829 

1918-19 4430 4568 4652 4628 4510 4604 4902 5330 5851 6090 

In explanation of this rather unusual record of attend- 
ance, the following report on the "habitual constructive neighbor- 
hood activities of the night school principals and teachers outside 
the classroom hours of instruction" represents the work of an aver- 
age of 150 teachers over the seven weeks' period from September 
to December, 1918. 

A. Visits: 

1. Visits to homes on school business 3,342 

2. General social visits to homes of night school students.... 1,444 

3. General social visits to other than night school students.... 1,678 



6,464 
B. Employment : 

1. Employees sent to employers 150 

2. Employers visited concerning positions 54 

3. Employers notified concerning opportunity for employees 50 



254 

C. Public Library : 

1. Persons taken or referred to libraries 424 

2. Branch libraries — volumes distributed 316 

D. Hospitals and Clinics : 

1. Cases sent to hospitals or clinics 158 

2. Cases sent to health office 18 

3. Cases referred to public nurse 157 

4. Cases referred to physicians 85 

418 

E. Aid: 

1. Families referred to county or city aid 85 

2. Families helped directly by teacher or school 404 

3. Persons receiving clothing in exchange for work through 

evening classes or other night school agency 589 

13 



These tables would appear to make somewhat of a contribution 
of proof that one of the first essentials in successful work of adult 
classes is close and intimate social contact between members and 
teachers of adult classes, and the people of the neighborhood in 
which those classes function. 

Adult attendance has been compared too frequently with child 
attendance compelled by law ; it should be reckoned with in the light 
of adult attendance upon other voluntary adult activities. Adult 
school attendance owes its sorry reputation as well as the inten- 
sive and extensive advertisement thereof, to its very immediate rela- 
tion to the allotment of public monies. -■ 

Some very illuminating comparisons, not worthy a place per- 
haps in this report because they represent too brief a period of obser- 
vation, have been made between the ratio of attendance to enroll- 
ment and the fluctuation of enrollment in the adult attendance in : 

1. Normal School extension classes, 

2. University extension classes, 

3. Church services, 

4. Musical clubs, 

5. Missionary societies, 

6. Improvement associations, 

7. Committees, 

9. Institute programs, 

10. Teachers' associations, 

11. Prayer meetings in proportion to church membership. 

Adult attendance reports in elementary day and evening classes 
make a very satisfactory showing in comparison with such groups 
even when in some of the latter attendance is stabilized by the pay- 
ment of tuition fees. 

The following blanks now under experimental observation seem 
to promise much of the right sort of publicity for adult classes so 
long as their use remains indicative of a really human interest on 
the part of teacher and principal. They could easily be standard- 
ized, however, into utter uselessness. 

14 



Principal of School : 

has been studying 

English in the County Hospital and is very anxious to continue. 

Could you send some one to call on and invite 'to 

attend your classes, incidentally showing the way to 

school ? Will you also fill out the blanks below and put the sheet 

in box for me? 

Sincerely yours, 



County Hospital Classes : 
We called on as you requested 

and 

Sincerely yours, 



CHAPTER I. 

Organization. 

In organization the work of the department has divided into 
three heads naturally, (1) the evening schools, (2) the day-time 
adult classes, (3) the home teachers. In the evening schools as in 
each of the others the organization has been naive and tentative. 
Human contacts have been valued more highly than card-indexes. 
With deliberate intent a search has been directed toward the actual 
needs of small groups. Such small groups are to be found pecu- 
liarly isolated only in cities that have grown in area and population 
by the real-estate tract or subdivision method. Every effort has 
been made to secure a high degree of flexibility both of administra- 
tion and organization along with a viewpoint experimental and 
highly social. The subtlety of approach and method that comes 
only from entire simplicity has been the utmost aim. 

The department is in charge of one of the assistant-superinten- 
dents ; under him serves the supervisor of immigrant education. 
The principals of elementary evening schools have been compelled by 
the circumstances under which new schools and an independent staff 
have grown to assume much of the burden of training the new 
recruits. In a small school or a group of smaller branch schools — 
and the whole policy has aimed at the simplicity, the sincerity, the 
intimacy of the small school instead of toward the alleged economy 
of the large school — the principal has much time for close super- 
vision of his teachers because he is not burdened by a load of 
routine work. 

The sessions of the evening schools run coordinately with the 
day sessions throughout the year. The year is for convenience 
divided into three terms with no marked boundaries of closing or 
opening of classes or schools. A fourth term of six weeks has been 
included in 1917-18 and 1918-19 under the name of "Americaniza- 
tion." The number of sessions a week varies from one to five 
depending on the needs, demands, desire of the neighborhood 
served. The problem of adult attendance is not simple. It is 
directly and indirectly affected by contributory conditions both 
obscure and obvious ; religious faiths and practices, illness, guests, 
employment and unemployment, over time and part time, moods, 
feuds, funerals, weather, wars, to say nothing of shoddy teaching 
and indifferent learning. 

The course of study has not evolved itself into a dignified and 
detailed statement of subjects pursued in due order with seemly 
beginning and end of accomplishment. It is as elastic and elusive 

16 



as can well be, and as Hexible as human experience. The class in 
cookery in one school never moves along the same lines as a 
cookery class in any other school. English-to-foreigners means 
"comforters" in one camp and "conjugations" in another. In the 
main the elementary schools ofifer : 

1. The common branches, 

2. English-to-foreigners, 

3. Domestic science : millinery, sewing, cookery, 

4. Simple woodshop, 

5. Elementary Spanish, 

6. Commercial branches, 

7. Music : orchestra, group singing, and clubs, 

8. Lip reading, 

9. Folk games and folk dancing, 

10. Physical training : gymnasium, yard athletics, 

11. Work permit classes, 

12. Personal hygiene. 

Especial attention has jjeen given to the development of the 
course in English-to-foreigners, beginning, intermediate, and 
advanced. The detailed statement of the course with the sets of 
lessons to accompany it has been developed by committees into 
a fairly complete manual entirely beyond the compass of this report. 
In mimeographed and printed form it is undergoing a steady 
process of addition, substraction, and multiplication. A thorough- 
going study of twenty text books in English-for-foreigners, at 
present passing in temporary form from hand to hand, is worthy a 
permanent expression not quite possible in the space of this small 
pamphlet. . 

In a general way, the plan of placing in charge of each night 
school either the day school principal or some person directly repre- 
senting his policy has been followed, although this has not been 
adhered to strictly in every case. 

There are several important objections to this procedure; first, 
the strain on the physical strength of any principal attempting to 
do both day and night service ; second, the disproportionately larger 
income that this service provides some principals ; third, the fact 
that the evening school suffers, along with the day school, from 
insufficiency, or inefficiency, when the principal happens to be weak. 

The advantage against which these objections must be weighed 
is, of course, the perfectly obvious one, theoretically, at least, of a 
continuous unified day and night service of the School in its 
community. 

17 



Concerning the employment of day school teachers in the 
night schools, much the same thing is to be said, with this addition : 
that it has proved to be quite impossible to build up an entirely inde- 
pendent night school staff so long as our scale of wages remained 
low. Professional dignity and self-respect, a coherent group with 
definite ideals and the spirit to serve, cannot be fostered on a maxi- 
mum salary of forty dollars a month. The new schedule for 
1919-1920 and the increased number and variety of training courses 
offered by normals and universities the country and state over, 
promise a separate staff" specially trained and adequately paid. 

An extemporaneous system of informal reports back and forth 
between the supervisor and the teachers and principals has developed 
itself automatically out of the general conditions under which the 
work is done. Distance, varying hours of work, varying quality of 
work, have conspired to make uneconomic and ineffective large, 
formal, conventional conferences of the entire group. Small dis- 
trict and group advisory meetings have gradually displaced them and 
have offered an opportunity to the teachers to substitute to their 
own advantage university and normal courses. So the close, inti- 
mate contacts of the department have been kept by hastily written 
reports scribbled usually on odds and ends of paper under diffi- 
culties which forbid exquisite literary composition or even careful 
penmanship. Some of those bits of narrative have been incor- 
porated in this report in the belief that they portray more accurately 
the facts and spirit of the work than formal array of tabulations. 

A modification of the former plan of organization of the work 
of the department for 1919-1920 offers a different basis for the 
distribution of the specialized staff of teachers over a wider area 
and with a freedom for still more highly diversified activities. The 
following excerpt from a report of Superintendent Shiels to the 
Board of Education indicates the cardinal points of the arrangement : 

(1) Evening schools have for years undertaken a variety of 
functions besides offering instruction in the various elementary 
branches. Most of the effort has been focused, however, on what 
may be called Americanization. This is a training for citizenship, 
especially for foreigners who do not speak English. Preparation 
for citizenship is not limited to instruction in English, although that 
is absolutely an essential condition. 

For some years it has been noted that the evening school 
organization was unsatisfactory for various reasons. 

(1) Many of the teachers have made no special study of train- 
ing foreign adults. This is a kind of instruction with a technique 
of its own and it should require special preparation. 

18 



(2) The Evening Schools might or might not be situated 
where instruction was needed. 

(3) No provision was made for the instruction of foreigners 
who could not attend evening schools but who might have been able 
to attend during the day. 

(4) Finally, until recently little attention was given to the 
use of manufacturing or business establishments as places for 
imparting instruction. 

There has been considerable improvement. The extension of 
instruction brings its own problems. A flexible administration such 
as these schools require must be adapted to the rigid requirements 
of existing law. 

(a) I recommend that so far as possible, all Americanization 
work be considered as a separate type of activity carrying its own 
organization. It is not possible to maintain a completely separate 
organization, but it is possible to approach the aim. Already we have 
more persons employed in this work exclusively than have ever 
before been so engaged. 

Parenthetically it may be stated that it would be impossible 
to get any competent group of mature workers for Americanization 
work exclusively unless at least a living wage were attached. 

(b) The law provides that we may have evening schools 
with a maximum attendance of four hours. Further, that there 
may be "special day and evening classes of elementary schools," 
that is to say, special classes held in the day and evening, which 
should be attached to the organization of day elementary schools. 
This means in the first case that the teachers employed with the even- 
ing elementary school organization would receive the pay fixed by 
the Board of Education for evening schools and that teachers 
employed in "special day and evening classes of elementary schools" 
would be paid pro-rata regular day rates (precisely as they would 
be paid if they were employed in day schools) on an hour for hour 
basis. 

I recommend that the maximum evening school session be fixed 
as heretofore at two hours at the rate of remuneration already 
arranged for, viz., $55 per month. It will be necessary to employ 
persons employed in regular day schools when we cannot get a suffi- 
cient number of competent people but so far as possible we shall 
endeavor to make the staff of these evening schools a special group 
of people. I cannot, however, recommend that that can be done for 
the principalships, because we cannot depend upon amateur prin- 
cipals for these evening school organizations. 

19 



(c) All classes carried on during the day for adults, i. e., 
for the same general purposes as the evening elementary schools, 
will not be attached to the evening elementary school organization. 
They will be listed as provided for in the fifth sub-division of Sec- 
tion 1661 ; that is, they will be special day classes of elementary 
schools. Persons employed in these special classes will not be 
employed in the regular day schools, though they may be employed 
in the evening schools. 

The law requires that these special day classes should be organi- 
cally connected with some existing day school and some principal 
of the existing day school will be the formal principal of the special 
day classes. These special day classes, however, will be subject to 
the same technical supervision as are the evening schools. 

As already stated, the pay in these special day classes will be 
the same as the pay in day schools, on a pro rata basis, hour per 
hour. 

Eventually, all the teachers in these special day classes and in 
these evening schools will form a corps separate and distinct from 
the regular school organization. It will be possible to give them 
sufficient pay to make the study of Americanization worth while. 
We are already beginning. 

CHAPTER n. 
Extension of Schools and Classes. 

In their earlier days, the night schools were placed in the 
centers of congested foreign population. They developed largely 
along with the neighborhood school. These same districts — all in 
a group in the river bottom — attracted naturally every other form 
of ameliorative social agency — branch libraries, clinics, missions, 
settlement houses, playgrounds. The large transient fraction — and 
its consequent migration — of the population has helped to prevent 
the development of any dangerous group into a social menace. 
These neighborhoods have developed with these years of effort a 
community consciousness and a community self-respect. One of 
the presumably poverty stricken neighborhoods contributed $1500 
to a thrift stamp campaign; the night school in another district at 
one meeting contributed $50 and some provisions to the French 
Relief Ship fund alone, organized a Red Cross unit of its own by 
raising funds which made possible the organization of other night 
school units, — all this in addition to contributing its quota to the 
thrift stamp and bond campaigns. These groups are no longer in 
need of intensive assimilative processes — they are on their way, 
traveling with their own power. 

20 




This is the first of three comparative charts showing the annual geo- 
graphical extension of adult classes and the increase in the diversity of op- 
portunities and activities offered in those classes. 



21 



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The tendency of local foreign population to move southward along the 
river is apparent in these charts. 



22 




The year 1919-20 opens with twenty-four evening schools, twenty branch 
evening schools, thirteen home teachers, fifteen Americanization teachers, five 
evening high schools offering elementary subjects, and ten cottages devoted 
to adult classes. 



23 



There are within the city limits, on the other hand, many 
isolated non-English groups, strongly in need of closer contact with 
American neighbors, customs, traditions, schools and language. It 
would seem wise — so long as the school department has devoted 
only a comparatively small amount of money to supplementary 
classes for adults — to remove the emphasis from the places where 
the need has been lessened by the work of the years, and to expend 
added energy on the outlying groups so long neglected. 

Some little study of these groups is, of course, a first essential, 
— their location, number, permanency, characteristics, needs. The 
beginning of such a bit of research was made in the early fall of 
1917 through the efforts of a joint committee headed by a member 
of the staff of the Los Angeles Public Library. This committee 
secured the cooperation of representatives from the several social 
agencies of the city. Group meetings of district workers were held 
in various convenient places using school district boundary lines 
for the most part. TJirough these discussions and direct contribu- 
tions, a fairly complete survey of foreign residents has been com- 
piled. This has been bulked in the form of an effective nationality 
map at the City Public Library, while experts furnished by the 
State Commission of Immigration and Housing have analyzed and 
tabulated its results in a report. This canvas has been directly 
valuable to the schools in the discovery of the districts where work 
in adult education is most needed and the indication of obvious 
streams of both small temporary and larger permanent migrations. 
It easily furnished the suggestion for future development not only 
of adult classes for foreigners but also of other community center 
activities. 

This specialization in adaptation to neighborhood needs has 
slowly developed a new ideal for adult classes : "Anything helpful, 
any time available, any place convenient." Gradually classes have 
been organized outside of the school room, sometimes supplement- 
ing the work of other agencies. Classes for adults have been held 
at eleven o'clock in the morning, at two o'clock in the afternoon 
and at nine o'clock at night. The instruction has been varied enough 
to include subjects so widely separated as the care of babies in a class 
of foreign mothers and lip reading for the hard-of-hearing. Infants 
in a family prevent attendance of their parents ; so the nurseries, 
long a feature in the Los Angeles schools, help to solve the problem 
when the money to support them is available. 

Under this concept of their function, the classes for adult 
wage-earners in Los Angeles have thus far gradually divided them- 
selves into seven clearly defined groups, namely : 

24 



a. The "night school," varied, however, with respect to the 
number of nights a week and to the hours of meeting and with 
respect to the subject matter of classes, as local needs demand. 

b. The classes for mothers. American and foreign, meeting in 
the school houses, either in the afternoons or evenings, in which 
subjects of interest to house mothers, such as food conservation, 
care of babies, etc.. are taken up. 

c. The labor camp classes for women in the afternoon or 
mornings and for men in the evenings. 

d. The "factory" classes, meeting in factories, Pullman car 
departments, paper mills, car barns, laundries, canneries, nurseries. 

e. The cottage classes. 

f . Classes in unusual educationally strategic points : hospitals, 
Red Cross salvage shop, etc. 

g. Boarding houses of large non-American groups of laborers. 

Elementsiry Evening Schools and Their Branches, 1918-1919. 

1. Avenue 21 : 

Evening and afternoon classes. 

Glen Alta, evening classes. 

Marengo Cottage, evening classes, afternoon classes. 

Branch Library, afternoon and evening classes. 

County Hospital, afternoon classes. 

2. Palo Verde : 

Evening and afternoon classes. 

3. Rosemont : 

Clifford ; Selma ; Temple ; all evening classes. 

4. Labor Temple : 

"Boss" factory, afternoon classes. 
"Stronghold" factory, afternoon classes. 

5. Grand Avenue: 

Evening classes. 
Seventeenth, evening classes. 

6. Hobart: 

Evening and afternoon classes. 

7. Fifth Street: 

San Pedro, evening classes. 
Barton Hill, evening classes. 

25 



9. Santa Fe : 

Evening classes. 

Economy Paper Mill, noon class. 

East Seventh, evening. 

Santa Fe Camp, afternoon class. 

Basement Class, evening. 

P. T. A. Cottage, afternoon, morning and evening classes. 

Red Cross Salvage Station. 

10. Fourtheenth : 

Evening classes. 

Twentieth, morning and afternoon classes. 

11. Amelia Street: 

Evening and afternoon classes. 
San Pedro Street, afternoon. 

12. Macy Street: 

Evening and afternoon classes. 

13. Ann Street : 

Evening classes. 

14. Boyle Heights: 

Evening classes. 

15. Rowan : 

Evening classes. 

Belvedere Cottage, afternoon classes. 

16. First Street: 

Evening Classes. 

17. Bridge Street: 

Evening and afternoon classes. 
S. P. Camp, afternoon and evening classes. 
Verde Cottage, afternoon class. 
Cornwell, evening and afternoon classes. 

18. East Side Jail : 

Evening classes. 

19. Moneta Evening: 

Evening classes. 
Gardena, evening classes. 
Hermasillo, afternoon classes. 

20. Utah Street: 

Evening classes. 

21. Hewitt Street: 

Evening classes. 

Hewitt Cottage, morning and afternoon classes. 

26 



22. Terminal Island: 

Afternoon and evening classes. 
East Harbor, afternoon classes. 

23. Thirty-sixth : 

Evening classes. 

Salt Lake Camp, afternoon class. 

Hunger Laundry branch, noon classes. 
The accompanying charts of the city show the annual devel- 
opment over this period of three years of adult elementary classes 
according to this policy of extension by small groups representing 
diversified interests. 

CHAPTER III. 

Training of Teachers. 

The first essential, however, of satisfactory attendance and suc- 
cessful work with adult classes is excellence of quality in the teach- 
ing done by the leaders of those classes. To further the apprecia- 
tion of excellence in technique of teaching in this particular field 
two-hour conferences have been held as a part of the Normal 
School Saturday Extension Work, and University Extension Work. 
Special committees also of teachers have been assigned to special 
work on various phases of Americanization and other adult instruc- 
tion. Attendance at such conferences and committee work is, of 
course, not necessarily productive of good teaching, but the fol- 
lowing figures of attendance at these conferences and committees 
are at least indicative of the interest of the teaching community at 
large in this general work of adult education. These conferences 
serve two purposes, one as regular normal school class work for 
which normal school credit is given for the continuous semester's 
work, and the other a general conference which any person or per- 
sons interested in the work of education may drop into for as 
many sessions as they wish. 

During this period — counting those using the courses for normal 
school credit and those using the courses as a general conference 
hour without credit- — the Saturday classes in Immigrant Education 
have enrolled 606; summer university courses 133; special commit- 
tee meetings to organize course, lessons, devices, workroom, etc., 
74; total, 813. During the enforced vacation of 1918-1919, a course 
in Americanization was offered under the direction of the instructor 
in Immigrant Education in the Normal School. Throughout the 
year the following committees served continuously furnishing mate- 

n 



rials and reports and policies that were made the basis of experi- 
mentation in various classes with every possible varying degree of 
success or failure : 

1. Workroom, exhibits, and organization of teaching materials. 

2. Beginning Lessons in English. 

3. Lessons in Local Civics. 

4. Special English Lessons for Mothers' Classes. 

5. Lessons in Advanced English. 

6. Home Teachers. 

7. Course of Study in English-for-foreigners. 

8. Special problems of the "camp class." 

9. Special vocabulary studies. 
10. Text books. 

The organization of such conferences as extension courses of 
the Normal School and of the University was made with an eye to 
enabling the teacher-students to receive the so-highly-valued 
advanced credits for time and energy spent in meetings and study 
in their especial field of activity, — no small item in the weekly pro- 
gram of activities for busy teachers who must meet several super- 
visors in several conferences. The employment of teachers inter- 
ested only in the single field of special classes for adults will relieve 
somewhat the pressure of this necessity. There remains only the 
difficulty of finding a possible common hour of meeting for persons 
conducting classes at well-nigh every possible hour of day and 
evening. 

These committees and conferences although they have a large 
field for their membership and have not been limited locally, have not 
contributed so large a special group of teachers of adult classes as 
had been hoped for, because the evening school salaries alone up to 
September, 1919, have not been adequate to hold teachers perman- 
ently in that work. A very few teachers — notably persons with 
some source of income — have remained over two or three years in 
service. Of the number enrolled in conferences the distribution 
is this : 

Day school teachers already engaged in day w'ork About 52% 

Night school teachers About 8% 

Y. W. C. A. workers About 3% 

Y. M. C. A. workers About 3% 

Other social service workers About 4% 

Retired school teachers About 4% 

Clubwomen, housewives, etc About 12% 

Supervisors, superintendents, principals About 2% 

Miscellaneous About 12% 

28 



Of the teachers thus obtained for special and separate service 
in adult classes in Los Angeles over two-thirds have been called 
to more remunerative positions outside the city. The salary sched- 
ule for 1919-20 promises better things, not so much because it 
increases the remuneration per hour, but because it provides teachers 
who wish to devote their entire time to adult classes a possible pro- 
gram of four or five hours a day of combined day and evening 
service in this special field. 

Thus assured a fair income an Americanization teacher is able 
to use her free time familiarizing herself with the literature of her 
special department, developing her materials for teaching, making 
her acquaintance with the other social agencies of her neighborhood, 
visiting the homes of her students, studying the economic and social 
peculiarities of her district, and otherwise taking such measures as 
any other specialist uses to make himself proficient. Out of these 
committees and training conferences no fewer than thirty distinctly 
excellent sets of lessons have been evolved ; some have found semi- 
permanent form as printed or mimeographed loose lesson leaflets ; 
others — more particularly the advanced lessons in English — are 
ready for a well-deserved permanent preservation in pamphlet form. 
The number of teachers who are dependent on the printed text 
book or supervisor-made lessons is consequently steadily decreasing. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Teaching Materials. 

A difficulty second only to securing trained, excellently adapted 
teachers of adult foreigners, is that of finding suitable teaching 
materials. The text books are, of course, hopelessly inadequate 
even for the simplest needs of all the multiplicity of working con- 
ditions in this pioneer field. The successful teacher is driven 
back on his own resources for lessons suited to his circumstances. 
Charts, flash cards, display devices of all sorts must be provided 
for each stage of advancement in the struggle with English. The 
teaching material for illiterate American ungraded groups must be 
developed in much the same way. This department consequently 
at every step of its work — but especially in the work in beginning 
English — finds itself under a heavy load of obligation to the Direc- 
tor of the Elementary School Libraries, and to her staff of assistants. 
Out of an already limited Hbrary space, a work room for teachers 
of elementary adult classes was given over. With the meager facil- 
ities and a ridiculously small expenditure of money the committee 
in charge of the work room, together with the librarian in charge 

29 



of night school material, organized under the Librarian's expert 
direction an adequate and orderly housing for a well-nigh hopelessly 
inchoate mass of experimental teaching equipment. To their daily 
task of handling books — checking in and checking out, commonly 
conceded to be library service — these librarians have cheerfully 
added expert service in (1) advising teachers, especially the younger 
and more inexperienced, in the choice of texts and reference books, 
(2) recommending devices for housing materials both in the com- 
mon work room and in the work rooms of individual schools, cot- 
tages and classrooms, (3) instructing committees and conferences 
of teachers on expert methods of filing, indexing, and preserv- 
ing all unbound teaching paraphernalia, (4) providing for the 
circulation of charts and similar devices on the same basis as cir- 
culation of books and pamphlets, — a most helpful contribution to 
teachers who are wrestling with the teaching problems peculiar to a 
new and uncharted field of educational endeavor, (5) actually con- 
tributing a large amount of the picture material needed, (6) guid- 
ing and aiding the professional reading of teachers by providing 
in easily available form current magazine articles and monographs 
and bibliographies not otherwise readily accessible, (7) loaning to 
teacher-workers, for all sorts of constructive purposes, every sort 
of library tool from paste-pot to filing case. 

This tiny work room in the library has served as inspiration and 
model for several similar work rooms in school buildings and cot- 
tages where day and evening teachers from the several departments 
of one building or from several buildings may develop their mate- 
rial to their wish. Such convenience and ease of access tends to 
increase the amount and improve the quality of teaching parapher- 
nalia provided by busy teachers. 

The appended informal report from the workroom commit- 
tee,- — a screed so obviously not intended for publication, — makes a 
greater revelation of the spirit that produces results despite the 
difficulties that beset the worker in a new field than any formal 
compilation of figures could give. 

"Rather imposing is the neatly printed sign on one door in the Olive 
Street School, which announces 'Evening School Workroom.' On opening 
the door the stranger would be amazed to find a tiny hole with absolutely 
no air and very little light. It offers no opportunity for exhibitors or 
exhibitions of teaching paraphernalia and space is cramped by piles of dis- 
carded books; few conveniences for work are to be fovuid. 

"However, it is the daily business of teachers of foreign adults to 
achieve the impossible; and applying that principle to the conduct of the 
vvorkroom, we have surmounted the scrapbook material, the lack of light, 
air and room, and have (at least we think we have) made our work seem a 
useful adjunct to the work in adult classes. More than one teacher has gone 
to this little cubicle with a dark brown Saturday morning taste in her 
pedagogical mouth and a dark blue Saturday morning outlook on life to 

30 



find that another teacher in the same mental state has already spread her 
printing sets, large papers and loose pictures around her preparatory to a 
long morning's work, hoping to have the workroom to herself. Both must 
be polite but both are Grosser than the well-known two sticks. Both enter 
into a systematic course of complaints beginning with the workroom and 
ending with educational conditions in general. By the time the professional 
universe has been torn to pieces and readjusted they have exchanged, uncon- 
sciously, several valuable ideas for overcoming obstacles; by eleven o'clock 
they have become quite friendly and sympathetic, and by noon they are 
often going gaily together to lunch. Knowing of friendships which have 
their root in this gloomy corner, we wonder if we really wish to exchange 
it for something more commodious and convenient. 

"To some of the old faithful among us the workroom is one exempli- 
fication of the best idea, the best business principles, and the finest source 
of inspiration in our adult work at the present time. We can remember, 
without looking back very far, the day when entering a class in the evening 
school (all too often our own) we could behold the heavily bearded leader 
of his people stumbling painfully and almost inaudibly through his allotted 
five minutes of time. We can aso remember the period which ensued a few 
months after the opening of teachers' classes in the Normal School, dealing 
with the teaching of English to foreigners. Possibly, in her intense desire 
to voice to us a comprehension of the need of lively teaching, the instructor 
laid too much stress on the use of large gay pictures and concrete work. 
One visiting a class in the evening schools during this period was almost 
certain to find a large brightly colored picture of some sort before the 
class. More often than not it dealt with the subject of Coco Cola, Royal 
Purple Grape Juice, Crisco, or some other article not absolutely essential 
to the welfare and happiness of a Mexican laboring man. When one entered 
the room, the class invariably entered upon a season of vociferous concert 
recitation, having some slight bearing upon the work of art before them. 
This period also passed and we began to lose sleep over the essential topics 
for conversation and reading in our adult classes. Each teacher settled upon 
her own subject for class use. She then began to look for large pictures and 
printed material which would enable her to "put it over." This resulted 
in endless hours of drudgery, with no suitable materials, with little help 
from the outside, and without the inspiration of other people's ideas. Each 
teacher entered upon the impossible task of making (with nothing but her 
two bare hands) charts and lessons appropriate to the needs of her own par- 
ticular group of people. During this overwhelming period of stress and 
strain it was burned into our separate and individual souls that we could 
accomplish nothing without co-operation. Discussion concerning a suitable 
place for the exchange of materials and ideas became one of the topics 
of the hour, and we were not surprised when a workroom committee was 
organized. 

"The committee began its work by requisitioning, under the expert 
guidance of the Elementary School Librarian, the best available materials 
for charts, flash cards, desk cards, and sentence cards. We also ordered the 
glue, paste, sign-makers, pencils, etc., so necessary in the manufacture of 
evening school 'Text Books.' We then spent many days on what was un- 
officially called 'The Dump,' rummaging for loose papers and magazines in 
the Red Cross Salvage Station at 6th and Alameda Streets. Here our 
committee with volunteer and drafted helpers, spent many happy days amid 
dust and dirt and collected a goodly number of beautiful and suitable 
pictures from the advertising sections of the magazines. These we filed in the 
workroom for the use of the world at large. 

31 



"Our numerous mistakes in the selection of materials and pictures for 
this work brought us to a keen realization of the fact that in order to make 
a really good chart we must first be sure of its purposes. It is generally 
conceded that those purposes are first, to socialize the group by centering 
the attention of all on one object and holding it there; second, by means of a 
chart bearing large printed words and sentences partially to overcome that 
difficulty which is always with us — the problem of overstrained and worn-out 
eyes; third, by means of the chart with its bright colors, clear outlines and 
large print to stimulate the tired and sleepy people who attend our classes ; 
fourth, to make these charts, showing as they do clean white beds, neat 
kitchens, and dainty babies, serve as object lessons to teachers and students 
in order and cleanliness. 

"In addition to a careful survey of these purposes, we have learned 
that we must not only adapt the style of our charts to the possibilities of our 
various classrooms but we must also make them as easily transportable as 
possible. We teacher folk have to travel long and devious paths to our rail- 
road camps, our factories and our laundries, and when we arrive perhaps 
we have only the side of a board fence for the display of our laboriously 
constructed work of art. 

"Since a chart adapted to the laundry class sitting on benches and 
trucks in a passageway between two buildings is not adapted to the class that 
must seek the cooling and odorous breeze wafted down the stairs of the 
paper factory, we have therefore never been able to standardize one style 
of chart, but we nevertheless are able to exchange them at a rapid rate. 

"Two mistakes have been often made in the construction and use of 
the chart. The first is the selection of a prettj' bright colored picture which 
will make a 'pretty' chart without regard to its adaptability for supplement- 
ing a lesson of really good subject matter. The second is the overcrowded 
chart which fulfills none of the four great purposes of the chart. To over- 
come the difficulty of making a clear cut, restful chart, we have got mate- 
rials for cards 9x12 on which further supplementary pictures and words 
may be placed without the confusion which comes from an overcrowded 
chart. These cards serve also as a further socializing force by inducing 
conversations between the various members of the class as well as between 
the teacher and individual pupils. Among the illiterate classes we find the 
primary flash cards most helpful and a large number of these have been 
made in the workroom. 

"While the workroom has been valuable in the distribution of these 
materials, pictures and facilities for chart making, the greatest value, as 
we believe, has lain in its adaptability to the exchange of ideas. One chairman 
has shown us her wonderful folding flash cards, one special leaflet com- 
mittee allowed us to see their lessons and charts in the process of con- 
struction, another chairman kindly donated lessons involving the use of 
toy furniture and accompanying charts ; we exchanged catalogues and 
addresses of catalogues, and we saw each other's scrap books. Miss Casey 
gave us wonderful talks on the methods of housing materials and on the 
use of key-rings, cloth patches, and numberless other bits of library 
equipment. 

"We who have seen the situation intimately can see the one little light 
in our workroom spreading its beams into many an out-of-the-way corner 
in alley and street and perhaps because we are visionary, but also because 
we are practical, we feel that once more co-operation has accomplished at 
least a small fraction of the impossible." 

32 



CHAPTER V. 

Social Phases of Adult Classes and Schools. 

It has proved to be rash to attempt to make generaHzations 
concerning the possibihties of social phases of school work and 
concerning the purposes and methods used in the development of a 
social solidarity in different communities. As in most fields of edu- 
cation the difficulty is almost entirely one of relativity. The suc- 
cess of social interpretation of the functions of an adult class or 
school depends on several determining conditions : 

First of all, perhaps, in these causative factors is the attitude 
of the neighborhood toward the school. Schools which are accepted 
as a component part of their communities may become faithful 
interpreters to their patrons. Schools which are simply geographical 
constituent units within, a group of families but not of that group, 
cannot hope — and indeed usually have no wish — to become leaders 
of any constructive program. 

This first condition is probably the result of a second, namely, 
the attitude of the school toward its neighborhood. At any rate 
they are inevitably retroactive as cause and effect. 

The social value of a school center is fixed, also, by the pres- 
ence or absence of other recreational features within the community 
life, — clubs, public and commercial diversion centers, — or by the 
ease or difficulty of transportation to those centers. 

The accessibility of the school house is a factor that often 
slips the attention of enthusiasts in the organization of play centers. 
A long, steep hill, a badly repaired sidewalk, a poorly-lighted 
approach, a considerable stretch of dark, uninhabited territory, — 
these determine all too frequently the measure of usefulness possible 
to a public school building. 

There is such a thing, too, as a social inaccessibility which 
is more powerful than geographical isolation. The elaborate struc- 
ture that literally and figuratively towers remotely above the sur- 
rounding cottages — or perhaps shanties — must radiate a very high 
degree of human warmth and light if it would draw and hold its 
people. The suitability of the school building as a gathering place 
for adults is fixed by its seating, lighting, heating, ventilation, size, 
equipment. 

The hours and seasons of labor and leisure observed by a com- 
munity group also help to determine the time and place and quality 
of its diversions. Rapidly alternating work-shifts, variable hours 

33 



and weeks of fishing, vagaries of fruit raising and drying and 
canning, all the vicissitudes of intermittent, occasional and seasonal 
employment regulate the social program of any adult group. 

Upon such shifting sands as these is constructed to a hearten- 
ing or disheartening degree the co-operation of all the social agencies 
which contribute to the erection of a civic community consciousness. 
Comparatively good or bad economic conditions fix the social expres- 
sion of the group. A community in which more than half of the 
population is employed only at intervals, with the average period 
of unemployment running larger than that of employment, may have 
leisure for recreation or study or other social activity but almost 
never the capacity or the inclination. These maladjustments of 
occasional employment and over work, existing in the face of a 
constantly growing demand for unskilled labor present a social con- 
dition as baffling as it is usual in industrial and semi-industrial 
districts. 

It has proved impossible, furthermore, to generalize concerning 
the types of social activity to be offered. These seem to be governed 
by conditions not unlike those that control their general possibility. 

The permanency of the population has proved to be an effective 
factor in the selecting of forms of diversion. A neighborhood of 
home owners for reasons not obscure, assumes a very different social 
attitude, general and specific, from that of the transient, sliifting 
rooming-house group. 

The type of recreation depends, too, on the existing racial or 
social barriers and the kinds and degrees of prejudice resulting 
therefrom. Lectures, concerts, moving-pictures are not infrequently 
possible where other more intimate forms of association are barred. 

The forms of diversion are governed, too, by the occupations 
of the majority of the group. Track workers who wield a heavy 
pick and shovel all day have not demanded gymnasium training. In 
far too many instances the disappearance of interest in reading, 
moving-pictures and libraries with their strain on adult eyesight 
can be traced directly to the introduction of new industries and new 
machinery that involve a heavy eye strain during the hours of 
labor, and in no instance has the neighborhood group been aware 
of its growing disability. 

In the main, the following principles have seemed to stand valid 
and safe : . 

1. The social activity must develop within the neighborhood 
itself. It is not well to attempt to take an activity to a group. 

34 



2. The social activity by that same token must serve the real 
needs of the group : that which is fundamental to one group is fre- 
quently entirely alien to the experiences of another. 

3. Social activities should be varied. Human nature likes a 
change; yet by some inexplicable human paradox we still enjoy the 
games that were played in the early morning of the race. 

4. The need for diversion varies directly with the pressure of 
confinement to hours of labor up to the point where the worker is 
too tired to play. 

In brief these social activities do not look forward to their per- 
manent retention within the public school organization for the reason 
that Americanization is a school function only because it is a civic 
function. It is no more than right that the school should assume 
charge of the elementary responsibility, but any educative process 
in Americanization in any community which does not develop in that 
community a strong, self-supporting, civic life based on an enthusi- 
astic, unified self-consciousness, has failed in its very fundamental 
purpose. 

The ultimate object of every educational center should be to 
displace itself very slowly and gradually by a strong neighborhood 
center which may or may not retain the educational features out of 
which it grew. 

A general idea of the social quality of the work of the evening 
schools can best be conveyed perhaps by a compilation of this sort : 

1. Proportion of total number of schools having playgrounds 

with leader in charge 50% 

2. Additional playgrounds supeVvised by principal..... 20% 

3. Play rooms for small children _ 5% 

4. Schools and branches offering non-academic classes : gym, 

folk games, story-telling, music, orchestra 80% 

5. Schools and branches holding community evenings, — -weekly 

or bi-weekly 70% 

6. Schools and branches offering social activities irregularly ; 

parties, clubs 98% 

7. Schools and branches chiefly or entirely social in character.. ..14% 

8. Schools and branches devoted to class work alone with no 

regular habitual social relaxations 10% 

The general point of view may well be interpreted by the fol- 
lowing specific report by the Principal on some of the phases of 
socialization attempted in one Evening School. 

35 



"The following experiments in socialization have covered a period 
of five years and have taken place in a thoroughly cosmopolitan neigh- 
borhood, composed mostly of American wage-earners, but having a sprinkling 
of well-to-do families who look with utter contempt upon their less fortunate 
neighbors, foreign, colored, and even the laboring class of Americans. The 
fact that the greater part of the neighborhood, because of its transient quality, 
is continually appearing, disappearing, and re-appearing, makes it difficult 
to measure any kind of an educational product and especially a product as 
elusive as that called 'Socialization.' 

"A continued study of a community brings to light the needs to be 
supplied by the Evening School. In this particular neighborhood of broken 
homes and pleasure-loving parents the children played in the streets and 
the young folks, both boys and girls, 'ran with the pack' — in other words 
gangs were numerous. After five years of attempting to solve the problem 
by furnishing well directed activities we still have the same gangs, the little 
brothers and sisters of the former ones grown up, but to our great satis- 
faction without the same police records. Of course, one cannot say exactly 
how much this improvement is due to any one agency, but during the three 
months when the Evening School was closed by the quarantine during the 
epidemic of influenza we had ample proof of the part an evening school 
plays in the community. The neighborhood quickly reverted to the original, 
and even patrons who always before had looked with scorn upon a school 
that allowed such boys and such girls to play upon the yard and walk about 
its premises asked when the night school would reopen as they were having 
no peace and would soon have no property. At last they realized that by 
centering the michief making, as they called it, and directing it at one 
place, the community was made safer and more sane, and at the same time 
that vice which might have remained hidden for all time was uncovered and 
corrected as far as possible. They also see more plainly than they did 
before that the easiest thing is to ignore the so-called social needs of- the 
community. This may sound as if all our problems were solved to our 
complete satisfaction; far from it. What we can do with limited time and 
means seems small and uncertain but by keeping our fingers on the pulse of 
the community, through its young folks, we prevent that which might 
develop into a more serious condition. 

"The activities discussed here will pertain to the extra-class room 
socialization of the game-room, the yard, dancing, dramatics, community 
singing and general community evenings. 

"1. Just as the whole result of night school class room activity is 
entirely dependent upon the teacher, so is this true in these so-called social 
activities. The teacher makes or breaks any of them. Of course, the chief 
purpose of a game-room is to take the place of the after supper activities 
of a well regulated home, — a thing our street-children do not have, — stories, 
books, lessons, games. Once in a great while a teacher is found who does 
supply the need of parents' guidance, and lessons of truth, fair-play, sharing 
with others, and general neighborliness are firmly fixed. 

"With the older children the game-room becomes a club-room and 
the instinct of gregariousness is satisfied by the definite organization into 
clubs and societies. This takes the place of the old gangs and is far better, 
because their energies are directed into the right channels. With proper 
equipment, which we so sadly need, a club of this kind would take the 
place of the commercialized pool-hall which is so attractive to young boys. 

"2. Yard activities furnish both a physical and social purpose. Be- 

36 



sides supplying a well-lighted and well-ventilated place of meeting, the gen- 
eral well-being which comes when evenings are filled with physical play 
cannot be ignored. A boy, physically tired by well directed games, will go 
home and go to bed and to sleep after school. The great problem lies 
with those who come 'dressed up' and will not play. 

"3. Dancing was first installed to supply the young girls of the district 
with the physical activity necessary for their welfare, as they were not 
allowed to play on the yard. This resulted in a constructive program of 
folk-dancing and I know of no girl who has been a member of these classes 
who has not been benefited physically, mentally and morally. Most of them 
prefer folk or aesthetic dancing to social dancing, although they set the 
standard of what is good at social dances. 

"Parties crept in as an answer to a need of the community. At first 
it was just a party where everybody came and danced as he or she pleased. 
This showed us the necessity of teaching them how to conduct themselves in 
the right way. Classes were started for girls and finally for boys. They were 
taught separately, only coming together for a party once in two weeks. At 
socials only those were allowed who had attended the classes. This method 
continued for two years and the standard of dancing was raised to positive 
decency — the boys actually cleaning themselves up, saying that unless their 
trousers were creased the girls would refuse to dance with them. This plan 
worked well for the reputation of, the school but it failed to reach those 
who most needed it, so now the bars are down on social evenings and we 
are in closer touch with all of our community. In these days of the queer 
modern dances we need to know what 'everyone is doing,' and do what we 
can gradually to replace the evil with something beneficial and decent. 

"4. Dramatics was introduced to give the younger children some- 
thing constructive to do, and with the older ones to satisfy the going- 
on-the-stage craving that most normal children possess during some period 
of their existence. The most definite result we have obtained thus far is 
that the entertainment furnished by this class has proved invaluable as a 
drawing card for general community evenings. 

"5. Under a very capable leader community singing will develop a 
community conscience. We have only begun and it has been a part of our 
general community evening program. When the songs are printed upon 
large charts and the attention of all directed to one spot a certain warming- 
up influence is felt that is entirely absent when individual papers are used. 
The songs used? Well, we do not follow the day-school course of study, 
and it will be many a long day before the "Hallelujah Chorus" can be pro- 
duced and enjoyed at our community m.eetings. 

"6. Our general community meetings arose as a war measure and 
were used during the war-period to stimulate patriotism through the promul- 
gation of war propaganda, — and because of their social value they have 
been continued. 

"Even at its outset, recognizing the difficulty of bringing our distinct 
types of people together into a harmonious meeting, we attempted to have 
two kinds of meetings, one light and frivolous for the young folks, and the 
other serious and classical for the adults. This idea was soon abandoned 
because the serious-minded preferred to watch their frivolous brothers at 
their antics. 

"So, after two years of experimenting, we hold a general meeting twice 
a month for the whole district. Some of the subjects taught in the evening 

2>1 



school such as dramatics and folk-dancing find expression at these meetings 
and are a drawing card. Our most successful evenings have been those in 
which the program was given by the people themselves or their children. 
No matter how simple the event, the crowd was larger and more appreciative 
than when a noted person was brought out from town — proving agairi that 
what people do for themselves means far more to them than that which is 
done for them. 

"For some reason on Community Evening there is a mingling of the 
whole district. Foreign mothers and fathers who are absolutely unreachable 
when approached on the subject of studying English come with their fam- 
ilies and sit beside Mrs. Highbrow whose child is to recite a poem. At 
least for one evening she forgets that her child must never be allowed 
to sit near a foreign child— and maybe some day just through this personal 
contact at these community gatherings neighbors will come to have a human 
understanding of neighbors. And maybe Mr. Foreign man after trying to 
enjoy a program in a language he does not understand, will wish he did 
understand and wish it so earnestly that he, of his own accord, will seek 
help at night school. 

"Community Evening has served as an advertising medium through 
which the neighbors become acquainted with the academic work of the 
school and thereby attendance at night school classes is increased. Day- 
school teachers who attend these meetings have more of a chance to meet 
the fathers and mothers of the district and discuss with them various 
problems than they have ever had through afternoon meetings of the 
P. T. A. 

"To sum it all up, there are many arguments against this social work 
in the evening school, and some of them sound. It is true that some chil- 
dren do come who do not need to come, and it is true that the young folks 
do not always go, directly home. It is necessary to do what seems for the 
good of the most people and keep a firm belief that the good accomplished 
is greater than the harm. In this work one gradually realizes that the problem 
will never be solved completely — that as long as the world is filled with 
young folks living under adverse social conditions the minds and hearts of 
social workers will be confronted with the same unanswerable questions." 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Immigrant Woman. 

The educational needs of the immigrant woman are many, 
varied and more or less obscurely hidden in a social complex that is 
not easily understood. The children are absorbed into the public 
school system ; the man is compelled to learn somewhat of the cus- 
toms, language, and ideals of this new coimtry ; the woman, prob- 
ably the most tremendous factor in the Americanization of the 
immigrant population, is usually an isolated human unit, alien, 
circumscribed by a narrow knowledge of the community life of 
which she ought to be a part, often and with good reason suspicious 
and afraid. 

38 



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The immigrant girl is obliged to adjust herself into an' amazing 
new world for whose experiences her childhood in another land has 
illy equipped her. She knows nothing of the laws intended for her 
protection; she is the potential prey of every dishonest fellow- 
countryman or American. Often she must support not only herself 
but others. Both she and her brother come in touch by the very 
nature of their conditions of Hving with the worst phases of our 
social life. To them the public school owes a training primarily 
social, but also industrial. She takes on automatically ways that 
are, even when not reprehensible, widely separated from the ways 
of her elders in her own group. The life tragedies of such young 
people, — the semi-Americanized, as it were, — who are neither Amer- 
ican nor foreign, are a source of tremendous social waste. Los 
Angeles spent in one recent year $1,271,375 in social cures for 
unemployment, poverty, sickness, crime ; it spent in educational pre- 
vention during the same period $38,983. 

The plight of the alien house-mother is becoming fairly well 
understood. The nation is beginning to realize that it can no 
longer depend on education of the foreign child alone, because the 
children, when once they acquire the language of the land, break 
from the authority of the foreign home. This rupture of the 
solidarity of the family has borne an appalling amount of juvenile 
delinquency for which there is no fundamental remedy. It is axio- 
matic that whatever tends to disirupt the family makes for anarchy. 

With the extension of the suffrage to women, arose another 
danger which involves the foreign woman. The present laws give 
the wife the nationality of her husband, so when the activities which 
stimulate naturalization as the only essential in democratization 
multiplied their efforts, scores of ignorant foreign women became 
voters. 

Gradually it became clear that these timid woman-creatures 
would not — and often could not — seek the school for education ; the 
school must seek them. 

Many unrecorded bits of such endeavor had doubtless been 
made previous to 1914, but that date seems to mark the first recorded 
public school class for foreign mothers. Taught by a Normal School 
cadet, the class met in the afternoon in the Macy Street neighbor- 
hood school. English, sewing, parties, and picnics were included 
in their program, — a scheme of activities unvaried in the develop- 
ment of the class through the years since. 

The summer of 1917 found the city school department without 
funds to support summer vacation schools for either children or 

40 



adults. A few schools for children were kept open by volunteer 
service from the general teaching corps. It happened that the 
same summer season was marked by an awakening of several social 
agencies to the need for adult classes, especially classes for foreign 
women. Early in May, 1917, a general informal committee of self- 
appointed and self-recruited members met to discuss the possibility 
of extending and stabilizing the various scattering forms of experi- 
mentation that dated back even to 1914. An originally unambitious 
program for six classes especially devoted to foreign women devel- 
oped into the organization of 21 centers with 27 classes for foreign 
women in places to which the work had not yet been extended. 

Only through the splendid co-operation of all the existing 
agencies could this summer work have succeeded. The classes were 
taught by students from the Los Angeles State Normal School, 
either recently graduated or working for Normal credit. The special 
preliminary training conferences were given by the Normal School 
teacher in charge of the Normal School classes in Immigrant Educa- 
tion. The supervision of the classes rested jointly with the Super- 
visor of Immigrant Educatiofi in the City Schools, a representative 
of the State Commission of Immigration and Housing, the Secre- 
tary of the International Institute, a primary supervisor from the 
Normal School and an instructor in the Home Economics depart- 
ment of the Normal School. The project was financed so far as its 
small expenditures went by the State Commission of Immigration 
and Housing except that janitor service and lighting were supplied 
by the City School department where classes met in school houses. 
Several foreign visitors of the International Institute and several 
social-minded club women lent aid in the general conduct of the 
work. The general poverty of the whole undertaking enforced an 
unusual degree of unselfish co-operation that has furnished a huge 
faith in that general method of procedure in later v^'ork. No local 
organization was called upon for help that did not respond with its 
aid. 

The Board of Health helped by criticising some lessons which 
were written on care of the baby and general sanitation. The 
nurses and housing inspectors assisted in advertising classes. The 
City Library supplied books and furniture for a house in a locality 
where no public building was available. 

As the work was distinctly pioneering in quality, it was neces- 
sary to use all possible assistance to bring the classes together. In 
each district a woman was chosen who knew the foreigners in that 
locality. She chose a leader among them and, 'with the foreign 
leader and the girls who were going to teach the class, calle'd on a 

41 



number of the women, asking them what they would Hke to do, 
inviting them for sewing or cooking or gymnasium or whatever 
seemed to interest them. For a week before the classes began, the 
teachers visited in the neighborhood making friends with their future 
pupils. 

The classes met in many places. Some were held in the public 
schools ; others in private houses ; one met in a settlement ; another 
in the open patio of a railroad camp, and perhaps the most unique 
of all was a class held in a discarded street car. This car was 
washed and cleaned every morning by an employee of the com- 
pany and run on a siding near the railroad camp; 

Whenever the classes met, there was an efifort to have all the 
meetings as informal and as social as possible. No set program was 
ever arranged. For the foreign women, much of whose life is 
children, an academic school has no appeal. When the school is a 
social event, accompanied occasionally by light refreshments, and 
engaged in the drudgery of domestic labor and the care of many 
when the teachers who preside over it act in the capacity of genial 
hostesses the school begins to take on the nature of a neighborhood 
recreation. 

In spite of the fact that the program seemed casual enough to 
the students, it was not without definite plan on the part of the 
teachers. Several series of English lessons were prepared which 
were well adapted to the everyday lives of the women. The names 
of the common fruits and vegetables and lessons on buying at the 
store, with the names of weights and money made a good beginning. 

During the sewing lessons ample opportunity was given for 
teaching the English words for the materials used and for develop- 
ing simple facts about hygierie and care of the home. 

In order to unify all the groups, the teachers met for a confer- 
ence once a week. Each girl came feeling that her class was the 
most important and her discoveries the most significant of the sum- 
mer. Theories of approach, education and method were threshed 
out with much feeling. Many of them came to show supervisors, 
trained in the work, that things which could not be done had been 
done well. 

In a Southern Pacific Railroad camp, where the families of 
the Mexican laborers live, there seemed at first little enthusiasm for 
English and sewing classes, and so, instead of arranging for a 
regular meeting place, the teachers made calls each afternoon on 
many of the women, helping them witli whatever sewing problems 

42 



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they might have and answering any questions on any subject which 
the women chose to ask them. From this, grew a small sewing class 
which met from house to house, and various garments were soon 
in the process of construction. A few clean new aprons, worn 
to show the result of the effort of. the day before, inspired every 
one to cle^an dresses, and from this to clean children's dresses and 
clean houses was but a short step. Gradually the simple words 
required for the asking for sewing materials and the names of the 
implements used in sewing were picked up in English, and before 
five weeks had passed an organized class of fifteen women was 
eagerly waiting for the English hour, when a definite lesson was 
given. In order to have a good meeting place for the class one 
woman cleaned up her house and rearranged the furniture to 
make more room. The teacher was tremendously encouraged when 
another mother brought in her baby whom she had taught to say 
'T sweep, I scrub, I mop," vigorously gesticulating with the broom 
and the mop as she went. For this group the railroad has since 
provided a good house where all sorts of meetings can be held. 
The superintendent of the company said that they could not afford 
to refuse any equipment that would make these classes possible as 
it all returned two-fold to the company. 

There was another group of Mexican women who lived 
together in a small colony on the outskirts of the city. These 
women were also inert about classes, until the teacher offered to 
show them how to make baby clothes in the American way. An 
Americanization cottage is carrying on in 1919 the work begun in 
1917. Indeed the greater number of these groups have been ren- 
dered permanent in the years since their inception. 

For a co-operative effort in adult education there can be no 
better example than the classes that were conducted in 1917 at the 
Labor Temple, among the girls of the Garment Workers' Union. 
The various local unions, with headquarters in the temple, contrib- 
uted to the rent of the building and the purchase of necessary 
supplies for cooking and other classes. 

Here, on three evenings a week, about seventy-five girls assem- 
bled. Part of them, who were interested in cooking lessons, prepared 
a simple cafeteria supper for the rest. Meanwhile the others had 
classes in millinery, simple Commercial Arithmetic, Beginners' and 
Advanced English, and the entire assembly came together after 
supper for a music lesson. A petition to the school superintendent 
to have these classes made a part of the school system and taught 
by teachers working under the school board, was signed by 300 
girls. This request was granted and a regular evening school has 

44 



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been held there since. The unions supphed the building' and equip- 
ment and the public school supplied the teachers until the institu- 
tion has become a large trade evening high school serving hundreds 
of students. 

The Japanese were among the first to accept an opportunity 
for learning anything that had to do with life in the United States. 
Their demands often far outstripped the knowledge of their teach- 
ers. They clamored for classes in first aid, embroidery, tatting, 
crocheting and knitting, and in spite of these many requests, their 
interest in English was paramount. 

No nationality was overlooked, and special pride has been taken 
in a class of German women that remained in the school house late 
in the afternoon until they must hurry to their janitor work in the 
large office buildings. Nor was it always necessary to group the 
nations separately. In some cases Japanese, Mexicans, Austrians, 
Armenians and Italians were grouped about the table quite as 
happily as if they had all been born under one flag. 

When the summer had ended ever3^one realized that the work 
had just begun. Desires had been created which could not be left 
unfilled. The problem of tying up each group to some permanent 
institution which would continue the educational program had to be 
solved. It is one thing to utilize a splendid six-weeks' enthusiasm 
for work during that short period of time ; it is quite another thing 
to establish in such a brief period of experimentation institutions 
that shall abide as constituent factors in education. 

For every center some plan was evolved for making the work 
permanent. In most cases it was done through the public schools 
by means of cottage and camp classes ; in others, through cadet 
work from the normal school, and in still others where pioneering 
was yet to be done, the International Institute and settlement houses 
and missions held the classes until they were strong enough to be 
taken over by a public agency. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Home Teacher. 

Early in 1915 the State legislature provided for a new type 
of teacher whose chief business is to weld together the cleavage 
between the foreign parents and home on the one hand and the 
school and other public agencies on the other. That she is a 
most essential part of every teaching staff in every school, foreign 
or native born, is granted, though the fact that our schools have 
become so highly organized and specialized as to render her services 

46 



necessary is a condition deplored by many thoughtful educators. 
In an ideal school in an ideal democracy every teacher and prin- 
cipal would be his own home visitor. 

The selection of the home teacher is a matter for serious 
consideration. She must be able to interpret the civic institutions 
of the neighborhood intelligently and accurately ; she must be in 
spirit and in fact so thoroughly part of the school that she fulfills 
not only the letter of the law which requires that she be as entirely 
responsible to the principal of her school as any other of his teachers 
but also the spirit of a bigger, finer law of loyalty, honesty, unselfish 
sincerity; she is seldom chosen from a miscellaneous gioup of appli- 
cants but she usually grows into her work in her district either as 
grade teacher or Americanization teacher ; unwisely chosen and 
injudiciously directed she may easily become a serious menace to 
the social group she is designed to serve. 

Her duties as interpreted by the group of home teachers in Los 
Angeles are stated in the appended report of a committee appointed 
by the conference of home teachers : 

Report of the Committee Appointed in June, 1918, by the Home 
Teachers' Conference on the Duties of a Home Teacher. 

During the past four years, the roll of home teachers in the Los 
Angeles Public Schools has been increased from one to twelve. Each 
home teacher has had the text of the Home Teachers Act for her 
constitution, and the authority of her school principal for her by- 
laws. Surely no body of public school workers was ever given more 
freedom to find their own way through an almost uncharted field. 
And no matter how hard the work has been, this chance for spon- 
taneous initiative has held it far above the drudgery level and kept 
it stimulating, creative and fairly exciting. For tliose engaged in it 
home teaching is still replete with discovery and adventure. 

Up to May 14th. 1919, the home teachers had never been sum- 
moned to meetings, submitted reports, nor had any general super- 
vision. On that date, rather momentous in their annals, they were 
assembled at their own request for their first professional 
conference. 

It was decided at this meeting, that the first step towards some 
degree of standardizing and organization must be to define the duties 
of a home teacher. Each member was to submit her category to a 
central committee who should merge all into a composite report. 

47 



Each teacher knew almost nothing of what her fellow home 
teachers were attempting. Hence the reports were as individual as 
the district activities. At the same time there was a remarkable 
unanimity in spirit, general intent, and even in methods of realizing 
such intent. All ring with straight-across helpfulness towards their 
respective neighborhoods. All are dynamic. Along with energetic 
methods of instruction, however, all refer to the accomplishing of 
better conditions by working with the people not at them. All show 
the understanding that improved standards of living can only come 
• from improved desires and ideals, and that these desires and ideals 
are a natural educational growth not a forced conformity to Amer- 
ican ways not genuinely accepted. 

It was decided by the committee that no summary of these 
answers to the duties query could possibly have the value of the 
original documents. Hence they are set forth in full along with the 
Home Teacher Law of which they are really interpretations. 

It was decided before the closing of the schools to hold a series 
of conferences for the purpose of considering difficulties and prob- 
lems more or less common. Some suggested topics for such future 
discussions are indicated below : 

1. Where in the school house may the home teacher have a 
settled and suitable place for her group meetings ? Where may she 
have a desk and a working corner for herself ? 

2. Home teaching entails the constant expenditure of money 
for carfares, soap, stationery, sewing materials, refreshments and 
what not. How can the teacher's purse be spared these demands? 

3. How may home teachers be protected from assignments and 
demands that belong properly in other fields than hers ? 

AMANDA M. CHASE, Chairman. 
RACHEL SUTTON. 
KATE BASSETT. 

The expressions of opinion by the members of the Conference of 

Home Teacher. 

I 
Duties of the Home Teacher. 

Shall be:— 

(1) To improve housing conditions. 

(2) To improve the mothers in every possible way, viz: 

48 



(a) By instruction in proper care and diet for their children. 

(b) By giving them the advantages of the cooking and sew- 
ing departments, also laundering. 

(c) By instruction in English. 

(d) By instilling patriotism. 

(e) By giving aid in the procuring of work — when neces- 
sary. 

(f) By the cultivation of confidence in the Home Teacher 
so that they will have some one to whom they may come 
whenever a home problem presents itself. 

(3) To co-operate with the school nurse by directing children 
to the various clinics. 

(4) To guide girls of the adolescent age by means of wholesome 
recreations, games, etc., and instruction in the proper care 
of the body. 

(5) To report cases of need to the County Charities. 

(6) To appeal to various clubs and organizations in the city for 
clothing and funds for milk for anaemic children. 

(7) To sell clothing, at a nominal price, to needy families in the 
district, thereby cultivating self-respect and avoiding 
pauperism. 

(8) To make the school administration better acquainted with 
home conditions and home influences. 

II 

The duty of the home teacher is to perform any task which tends 
to bring the school and community into closer relationship ; to create 
a knowledge of the importance of the school and good citizenship 
to our national prosperity. 

Our great aim of course is to bring into closer co-operation 
school and home, parent and teacher. 

When starting work in a new neighborhood, the home teacher's 
best way to get entrance to home is probably by looking after the 
cases of habitual absence and tardiness, for a while at least. 

When she is acquainted with mother and home, she can often 
make suggestions as to the care of baby and older children, the 
home in general, and its relation to the neighborhood. 

Often a child need to go to the clinic. I think the home 
teacher should see that he gets there. A home teacher can help in 
domestic affairs when called upon. 

Take foreign women shopping. 

Organize camp and factory classes in the places where the 
people of her district are employed. 

49 



Ill 

The duties of a Home Teacher as I understand them should be : 

1. To investigate cases of chronic tardiness which appears to 
originate in the home, and strive to adjust conditions causing it. 

2. To investigate cases of chronic absence, analyse its cause 
and strive to relieve conditions caused by 

(a) Sickness of child. 

(b) Sickness of parent. 

(c) Sickness of other members of family. 

(d) Carelessness and lack of interest on the part of parent. 

3. To investigate cases of unkempt children caused by 

(a) Poverty — aid in finding employment. 

(b) Slovenliness. 

(c) Illness or loss of mother, etc. 

(d) Lack of pride on part of child. 

4. To give special attention to immoral or unmoral children. 

5. To relieve a rebellious or non-co-operative attitude on part 
of child through an understanding of, and sympathy with parent — 
hence gaining co-operation of parent. 

6. To relieve any misunderstanding between school and home. 

7. To win respect for our educational system by revealing its 
efforts to prepare children for life and life's work. 

8. To reconstruct home conditions (when necessary) that it 
may be self-maintaining and hold its self-respect. 

9. To serve as an exchange between need and relief through all 
public social agencies, that aid may be asked for, not as charity, but 
as their due in a republican form of government such as ours. 

10. To educate women toward keeping a clean home. 

11. Educate women toward attending school classes in order 
that children may not feel she is inferior to them in education. This 
will serve to maintain the natural order in the home with the parents 
at its head. This promotes obedience and respect for them and 
diminishes delinquency. The home is the natural basic social unit 
upon which the social structure rests, and hence must be maintained. 

12. To leave a record of visits made with brief account of 
family and home environment. 

13. To promote good citizenship. 

50 



IV 

Attendance: 

Reasons for habitual absence and tardiness. 

See mothers' side of the situation. 

Try to reheve the situation if the family needs the child's help. 

Home Problems: 

Report every new baby to the district nurse and see that it 

receives the proper care and nourishment. 
Put babies in the nursery so that older children may attend 

school. 
Reconcile the foreign parents to the new generation and 

American ways. 
Help to settle domestic troubles, especially among the younger 

people — drunkenness, gambling, wife-beating, and family 

desertion. 

Americanicatioii: 

Emphasize the laws — compulsory education, citizenship, civil 

and federal laws. 
Classes of teaching English to grown girls and women. 

V 

I. Attendance and preparation therefor : 

a. Bringing new children to school. 

b. Bringing to school children absent without sufficient excuse. 
In both instances, explaining compulsory law to parents and 

also benefits of attendance. 

c. Investigating cause in home for habitual tardiness and trying 
to correct it. 

d. Same with lack of preparation for attendance. 

II. Group teaching. 

Assembling into groups at homes and at school as many women 
as possible for instruction in English, sanitation, patriotism, sewing, 
cooking and singing. 

III. Laboring individually with some of the dirtiest homes. 

■IV. Being the messenger between home and school. Reporting 
home conditions at school and school requirements at home. 
Spreading the news of night school and of community center 
events. 
V. Doing first aid social service by connecting families in trouble 
with the appropriate social agencies. 

51 



VI 

This is my idea of a home teacher's duties : 

1. To visit homes of habitually absent pupils to try to determine 
cause of absences, and to aid as far as possible in relieving cause 
when found to be due to unusual conditions within the home. 

2. To discuss and explain or "emphasize" the relation of "home" 
and "school" especially in regard to the welfare of the child and 
community. 

3. To aid in bringing about a better understanding between the 
American-born and foreign-born residents. 

4. To emphasize the advantage of being a citizen and voter. 

5. To aid the school or teachers in every possible way in any 
special matters that come up for explanation, adjustment with the 
home. 

6. To encourage at all times the spirit of co-operation. 

VII 

With the splendid corps of city and school nurses, truant offi- 
cers, charity workers, etc., that the city of Los Angeles maintains, 
it seems to me the duties of a home teacher are first and foremost 
to Americanize the homes by means of classes in English for the 
women at the school, the home and places where the women work. 

VIII 

The home teacher is the connecting link between school and 
the home. Her duties are extensive and varied. First of all the 
teacher ought to get acquainted with her district. The best way 
is through a general survey of homes. Such a survey we have 
just completed at one of the neighborhood schools. By frequent 
visits to the homes the teacher becomes well acquainted with the 
women and can give good advice concerning household economics. 

The home teacher should establish classes for the women as 
well as for the young girls — the future mothers. These classes 
should be conducted in school or in one of the homes where a few 
women can be assembled at a time. The instruction should be in 
English, sanitation, the care of sinks, toilets, disposal of garbage 
and extermination of vermin and flies. Then there ought to be a 
model bungalow, where the women can be instructed in household 
economics, economical purchase and preparation of food, in venti- 
lation, in sewing, etc. The same bungalow should be used as a club 
for the women of the district whereby they can come together and 
have some entertainment. This club should be under the super- 
vision of the home teacher. 

52 



The home teacher should have classes in housekeeping and care 
of babies for the foreign girls as well as for the foreign women, 
where they will be instructed not only in taking care of the house 
and sanitation, but incidently in the English language. 

The home teacher should be an advisor not only in regard to 
the educational and recreational facilities of the community, but also 
in regard to medical and financial needs of the people, securing 
country and state aid or employment for those in need of it. 

The home teacher should not devote too much time to looking 
up truants. While a small amount of this work brings her in to 
closer contact with the homes, too constant devotion leaves little 
time for the more important work. 

IX 

I have not been in the work of home teacher long enough to 
outline her duties in detail. In general her duty as I see it, is to 
follow closely as a guide to fhe text of the Home Teacher Act. 

I find that in order to accomplish anything definite, I must 
divide my day : Morning-group teaching in the homes, general social 
service work and problems arising from school attendance. After- 
noon-group teaching at the school. 

X 

The framers of the law saw the big problem of the Americani- 
zation of the immigrant ; that the day school was in a measure reach- 
ing the immigrant child, and the night school the men and youth ; 
'but that nothing was being done to help the immigrant mother to 
make her adjustments to the new environments. If Mohammet 
could not come to the mountain, the mountain would go to 
Mohammet." 

The law seems to me quite explicit, that the work of the home 
teacher is to be in the home of the children instructing children and 
adults," not in the school room, Juvenile Court, store room, and run- 
ning errands. If she is wise she will make such a friendly tactful 
entry into each family circle that the mother instinctively turns to 
her in her most serious perplexities and finds encouragement and 
help. 

She will knit the home and school together in such a way that 
the foreigner and his family will feel that the school is the agency 
through which his deepest needs are met. 

53 



You cannot lay down hard and fast rules for her work, as 
each family, and each mother at the head of that family, will be 
an individual problem. 

No more can the home teacher tell you her way of working or 
show you her work. But she gets results that are of inestimable 
value, if left unhampered. Ordinarily the home teachers are women 
of maturity, wide experience, intense interest in social welfare, and 
can safely be trusted to work out their own problems, and not 
"soldier on the job." 




The children play in the yard while the mothers are in class. 



Reprinted from the Report on the Los Angeles Summer Experiment, 1917. 

54 



THE STORY OF A CLASS FOR ^lOTHERS. 

The following extract is taken from the note book of the prin- 
cipal of Albion Street School. It is rich in suggestion because it is 
an original human document hastily written as a record with no 
thought of literary effect. 

"In March, 1916, a class for women was formed at Avenue 19 
school after some preliminary visiting to homes. The class was to 
meet Friday afternoon from 2 until 4. The English was taught by 
teachers who volunteered their services and v/as rather an unsettled 
and variable program. Some volunteers from the D. A. R. also 
aided. The sewing was taught by the teacher in charge of the 
nursery and some Normal School cadets. Refreshments consisting 
of coffee and wafers were served at each meeting. Although the 
room was dark as well as crowded, a good attendance was recorded. 

"The fall following, the first meeting of the class was held the 
latter part of October. A conference between the representatives of 
the D. A. R. and the school made plans for the future. It was 
deemed unwise to give away new material free and a compromise 
was made whereby the adult would pay one-half the wholesale price 
either in cash or labor. It was also agreed that used garments 
might be earned by the work of repairing or renovating. The serv- 
ing of refreshments was continued although the labor connected 
therewith was in practice a matter not so easily disposed of. 

"The teacher in charge of the nursery had discovered the pre- 
vious year that the labor and visiting involved in the maintenance 
of a Mothers' class was too great a strain in addition to regular 
duties, so she resigned in the course of a month. At about the 
same time the representative of the D. A. R. resigned on account of 
ill health and a new one was appointed. 

"Because of the diminution in the corps of workers it was 
thought wise to have the class three afternoons a week but to 5-erve 
refreshments on Friday only. On that day two three Normal School 
cadets assisted but most of their time was taken up in preparing 
refreshments and in dish washing. It was noted with interest that 
the attendance seemed as large on the days without -efreshrnents 
as on Friday. 

"During the entire year two enthusiastic teachers had charge 
of the English and the classes in this subject were well attended, one 
for beginners and one advanced. They combined for music and 
patriotic exercises. The lessons were made practical, a great deal 

55 



of dramatization and conversation was introduced and last but not 
least, lullabies and other songs were taught with piano accompani- 
ment. 

"At first national and other lines were strongly drawn and 
prejudices and jealousies were pronounced; these qualities began 
to grow less and a "homey" feeling to prevail. 

"Soon the class outgrew its quarters and was removed to the 
large well-lighted kindergarten, leaving the smallest babies in the 
nursery. In the kindergarten they could chatter, laugh and sew with 
no fear of disturbing any other school activity. 

"At different intervals there were social afternoons when there 
was neither English nor sewing but music, dancing and games. The 
teachers of the school entered into this feature whole-heartedly and 
to them in a large measure was due the success of the occasion. One 
woman remarked that she had been to no social event of this kind 
during her entire married life, a period of 18 years. Some others 
thought it a fine joke to be playing thus frivolously while their 
husbands toiled but they justified their actions by the recollection 
that so often their husbands indulged in this sort of thing evenings 
while the wives remained home with their families. 

"At one time the home teacher planned a shopping excursion 
for the women, the goal being the nearest municipal fruit and vege- 
table market. It was thought that perhaps six or eight women 
might enjoy going. At the time set for starting, some thirty women 
were present. They left their children at the nursery and made 
their way to the market like a group of chattering school girls. 

"Twice during the year an exhibit of work was planned for the 
women by the courtesy of the Ebell Club. At this time all kinds 
of fancy work made by any woman in the district or out of it were 
shown and sold. Both times a good sum was realized and in several 
cases women received encouragement in their struggle to become 
self-supporting. During the entire year articles of this kind are 
bought by teachers or their friends. The volunteer worker who 
had charge of both sales deserves a great deal of credit as well 
as the club that has been most gracious in its aid. 

"The class had been running only a short time when it was 
discovered that the method of handling used clothing was most 
unsatisfactory. Some garments needed no alteration whatever and 
some articles were so much better than others that it Avas most 
difficult to be fair in their distribution. We discovered again the 
great truth that nothing is appreciated when acquired without effort. 
Hence a complex system of bookkeeping was devised whereby a 

56 



credit of ten cents was given for an hour's work. At intervals 
rummage sales were held and women received credit slips and pur- 
chased articles desired from tables until their credit was exhausted 
or more. Those having no credit could also purchase with the 
understanding that they would be glad later to cancel their indebt- 
edness. This gave the women an opportunity to select from a great 
variety and they also recognized the fairness of the arrangement. 
It was necessary sometimes to place a limit on the number of certain 
articles that might go to one customer. 

"Until February, 1917. the teacher in charge of the classes was 
paid by the D. A. R. for three days of teaching and for four mornings 
home visiting. Later the Board of Education paid the teacher for 
the class work at the evening school rate but the D. A. R. continued 
paying $10 for home visiting. This teacher devoted two afternoons 
to similar work in another school so that in all she received $50.00 
a month for her most arduous labor and very long hours. 

"The work of the honje teacher is very broad. With the co- 
operation of the principal and other teachers, an attempt is made to 
find employment ; report charity cases ; ask health department to 
improve methods of housekeeping, cleanliness within and without; 
to nourish and clothe children better and cleaner ; to improve the 
social tone of the neighborhood by inculcating a higher toleration 
and appreciation ; to bring about a realization that the home and 
school are working toward the same goal, — a fuller life in every 
sense of the word ; to inculcate either a sense of thrift in one case 
or to develop a righteous thrift out of a kind that tends to sacrifice 
home, women and children at the expense of accumulating dollars ; 
to introduce people to all the agencies intended for benefit and pro- 
tection and to make them independent in their effort to help them- 
selves ; in fact to make a community able to stand alone in case a 
school were removed. The school initiates such a community into a 
useful, helpful, independent citizenship in the land of its adoption. 
The measure of value of such work in a district is not in what a 
school does for the district, but what it can train the district to do 
for itself. 

"Toward the close of the year a number of women found 
employment in a neighboring cannery. On the afternoons when 
their classes convened they came hurrying directly from the factory 
to school if they could spend only a portion of their time. This 
applied to the English as well as to the sewing and was a source 
of gratification to the volunteer teachers. At the end of the year 
one woman acted as spokesman for the others in expressing appre- 

57 



ciation for what had been done and in hoping that the entire corps 
of teachers would return another year. They afterwards wrote 
letters to that effect. 

"During the year two faithful representatives of the D. A. R. 
came to the school each week and when one of them went to the 
Orient she sent from Japan cards to each member of the class over 
which they rejoiced as children. Letters in English also were 
written by members of the class to these women thanking them for 
their interest, labor and kindness. 

"During the entire year as rapidly as it was discovered that we 
had outgrown any method or policy, the members of the D. A. R. 
always supported us strongly in our changes, or at least gave assent 
to try experiments. Their attitude was one of co-operation and not 
dictation : they grew along with us. 

'Tn May, 1917, we thought it well to interest the women in 
Red Cross activities. We therefore undertook to have twelve 
pajama suits made. It was clearly understood that time put on 
the suits was not to be paid for but that the whole thing was to be 
a labor of love. At first only the best needle women were permitted 
to sew on these garments and the whole procedure was voluntary. 
In a short time the poorer seamstresses and the older women 
expressed regret that they could not assist in the work. In time 
practically every woman was at work although much of the sewing 
had to be taken out after they had departed. This show^ed clearly 
a changed attitude on the part of the women as earlier in the year 
they came merely to receive and not to give. The attendance was 
so large that an assistant aided the home teacher in sewing. 

"In September, 1917, we decided to put in practice some more 
ideas gained during the work of the previous year. It was decided 
that used clothing was to be paid for either in cash or labor (a 
practice really followed the latter part of the former term) and 
that new material was to be sold at full wholesale price, paid pre- 
ferably in cash although in necessary cases labor would be accepted. 

"The D. A. R. voted to aid somewhat in the purchase of new 
material but the school did all purchasing, sending the bills to the 
donors. Formerly the D. A. R. with one exception had made all 
purchases. At this time the home teacher was assigned for four 
full days in this district and her salary paid entirely by the Board of 
Education. 

"The D. A. R. had loaned us four sewing machines. The 
School Department now sent four new ones so that those formerly 
loaned could be removed for Red Cross and other work. 

58 



"The English work proceeded as formerly, the attempt heing 
made to give such lessons as would meet the needs of the women. 
The beginning and advanced classes were again organized but it was 
soon plain that two more classes were needed, one for entirely new 
pupils and one for the very advanced. 

"This year no refreshments were served excepting on special 
occasions and the attendance was not afifected. We had a Hal- 
lowe'en, a Thanksgiving and a Christmas party. The crowning 
event thus far has been a party given by the women to the teachers. 
In the course of a conversation lesson, recipes were discussed in 
which the women described their national dishes. They finally said 
that in order to prove to the instructor that the aforesaid were deli- 
cious they would bring her a small sample. Later it was decided to 
increase the size of the sample and give all the teachers in the school 
a surprise. So one day at one o'clock the women began stealing in 
to the school room with mysterious parcels wrapped in cloths or 
newspapers. — a happy, laughing, chattering group of housewives. 
By three o'clock the tables were set in true native style and the 
teachers invited to the feast.' The women hovered about their own 
dishes, all at the same time trying to explain how the dainties were 
made, the length of time required in preparation, and the various 
virtues of the dishes. They had but one napkin and after ostenta- 
tiously tying it around the throat of the principal who sat at the 
head of the tables and excusing the absence of more napkins, the 
festivity proceeded in a jolly neighborly way. The women appre- 
ciated so keenly an opportunity of showing their own skill in their 
own way. 

"One day the home teacher told some of the women that one 
of their own nationality was coming the following afternoon to 
explain the details of "Red Cross work and they were told to spread 
the news. Although no announcement was made at school a group 
of 65 were present the following afternoon. Wool was given out 
for knitting and at once work was begun. A sample of each kind 
of garment was left with the school. Great quantities of splendid 
work were turned in. At the same time the food conservation move- 
ment was also explained and pledge cards were signed and placed in 
windows. Some women who had never felt the need of the class 
because they understood English and needed no sewing, attended 
regularly for the war service. 

"The next step in development was quilt-making. In this work 
and also in sewing carpet rags and mending, the women have been 
given the opportunity of working for credit. The women had 
learned to feel so much at home that it. was a common sight for 

59 



them to arrive before one o'clock, to go to their room and to con- 
tinue knitting while five or six teachers were spending the latter 
end of their lunch hour in the same way and to exchange ideas 
regarding work in hand as well as fancy work. The atmosphere 
was such as one might find at an old-fashioned quilting bee. Women 
of difi^ering nationalities now work at the same tables and interpret 
for one another, two neighborly functions unheard of in the early 
history of the class. 

"Another event of great interest was a baby show. Sixty-eight 
babies were exhibited, dressed in their best. There, of course, were 
no judges and no prizes but pictures were taken of the group and 
one presented to each mother at Christmas. At the Christmas party, 
100 women and 200 babies were in attendance. A room large 
enough to hold such a gathering is much needed as well as a cooking 
room and a sewing room. 

"During this same year an attempt was made to aid in furnish- 
ing of very meager homes. It is hard to keep house and to arouse 
any degree of enthusiasm when there is nothing to keep. The 
school house became a depot for used furniture, donated for dis- 
tribution to meet such needs in this departure and thus furnishings 
received are earned in the same way as clothing. ^ A few curtains, 
or a comfortable rocker, make a great difference in the appearance 
of a home and the interest taken in it. An experiment was also 
made in removing one family to a better house. This family had 
lived in a miserable place without windows and had owned only 
articles of furniture wretched beyond description. The city housing 
commission had said that something must be done and gladly gave 
the school the task of solving the situation. 

"A temporary quarter was first found in the rear of a store. 
Later, a house long uninhabited was located in a new section of 
the district. After a great deal of negotiating, the owner decided 
to rent the premises on condition that the rental be assured. 
Encouraged into wider fields of experimentation, we invited a 
charity representative to meet with us. We recommended that the 
charities pay the rental to the owner regularly and said that we 
should collect it from the tenants in small amounts as they were able 
to pay and refund it to the charities. The experiment has worked 
admirably. The family has paid in installments never less than 
$1.00 at a time and while never paying in full, has made a splendid 
effort. A book is hanging in the house into which amount collected 
is carefully recorded and pride of independence inscribed. The 
house was whitewashed and cleaned inside by the proud family 
before entering; indeed tq give the front room an entirely modern 

60 



tone, a discriminate amount of bluing was added to the whitewash 
for that room. All former househld furnishing except a few safe 
articles were burned and better ones supplied. The family bathed 
and put on clean clothing and was then ready to begin life on a 
self-respecting basis. Lace curtains were draped over clean windows 
and the whole place had a homelike appearance. At once an orna- 
mental garden was started in the front yard and a vegetable gar- 
den now covers the rear of a large lot. The children started to 
school and the "black sheep" family of the district took on a good 
standing. A great deal of patience was required but step by step 
the problem was solved. No family in the district is now having 
rent paid by outside agencies. The details of the social development 
of this one family would make an interesting book. 

"At one time the women were asked if they would help in a 
program to be given in the Women's Club House in Hollywood. 
They were glad to do so and they recited verses, sang songs in 
their own tongue and in English, and gave native dances in costume. 
The women seemed to feel like school girls and when on the stage 
in the dance made themselves so much at home that some not 
originally in the dance joined in and clapped each other in and 
out in good Continental style. They wore their best jewelry and 
were indeed a happy group. The ride there and back by machine 
was a wonderful experience. Later in the year, the women gave 
a patriotic program for the school and friends in which the same 
crowning number was a flag drill. The women wore Continental 
costumes and those of advanced age took part along with young 
girls. 

"The last event celebrated this same year was an exhibit of 
foreign handwork with no idea of selling. Most interesting articles 
were brought out of bottoms of trunks — some of historical intertest, 
others of family interest — heirlooms of all kinds and some pieces 
of very fine workmanship. Glass cases were rented for the ade- 
quate display and protection of valuable pieces. The exhibit which 
extended over two weeks, was a sort of mutual appreciation feast 
and was a sight well worth seeing. It emphasized again the point 
that we all have something to contribute toward this wonderful 
thing called 'Americanization' and that the more we know of each 
other, the more worth while we discover each other to be." 

A Typical Day of One Home Teacher. 

The home teacher was very busy preparing her own two chil- 
dren and herself for their day's work, when in the midst of her 
preparation she heard the door bell. She opened it to discover a 

61 



not at all unusual spectacle. It was Mrs. E., who has a very bad 
husband. They have two children soon to be joined by a third. 
Jim does not support his family. Several months previously the 
home teacher had been the means of summoning him into court for 
non-support and he had been sentenced to six months in the county 
jail, where he had to work while the County paid his wife $46 per 
month. This money had been the only support she received from 
him during her eight years of married life. That morning she 
came to beg the home teacher to help her get the repentant husband 
out of jail, as he is promising to be good. This matter attended 
to, the home teacher made her way to school. Here she found Mrs. 
R. waiting for her to go with her to poUce court, Mrs. R.'s husband 
having been arrested and she wanted to see if his stay in jail 
could not be prolonged. So the home teacher secured the principal's 
assent to the trip to police court. Mr. Berry, the Probation Officer 
of the police court, said that consultation was necessary, and set 
the time for it at five o'clock. 

By chance at the police court the home teacher met Mrs. N. 
in great trouble. Her boy had been arrested for speeding and 
driving a motorcycle when he was intoxicated. She did not know 
how to speak one word of English. She had a small school boy with 
her, but children make very poor interpreters. So the home teacher 
sent the boy back to school and took the matter over. She succeeded 
in getting the son out and he went home with his mother. On the 
way back to school the home teacher met Mary B. who was coming 
to see her. Her husband, a young good looking man who looks and 
talks like an American-born, had left her with two children and 
taken with him $1100, all the family savings during years of hard 
work. 

After this case had been temporarily disposed of, the home 
teacher made eight home calls between 1-2:15 P. M. Two visits 
concerned children who habitually come dirty to school. The moth- 
ers said that the children had run away before they had time to clears 
them up. This condition the teacher met by advising the mothers 
to clean the children up carefully before they go to bed at night, 
then they will be at least fairly clean in the morning. The third 
was a child who had weak eyes. The parents were persuaded to 
permit him to go to the P. T. A. Clinic to have his eyes examined 
and fitted with glasses. Three girls, aged 14 and 15, had been stay- 
ing home to do the family washing. They were taken from their 
work at the wash tub and sent to school. Another girl was dis- 
covered to have gone with lier mother to the doctor to serve as an 

interpreter. 

•I 

62 



At 2 :30 the home teacher took three mothers to the doctor's 
office, finding as they all climbed into the car that three more were 
waiting to go. She was bvisy at Dr. K.'s office until 5 P. M., inter- 
preting, explaining, soothing and quieting them as these people so 
often lack self-control, and are so easily frightened. 

At 5:15 Mrs. R., the Probation officer, a poHce woman and the 
teacher went to the East Side Jail to see Mr. R. He had deserted 
his wife and remained away for three years, during which time 
she supported the family by hard work. When he finally came back 
she welcomed him home, but insisted that he work to help her with 
the family expenses. Whereupon he got drunk, beat her, frightened 
the children, and finally was arrested. The conference in the jail 
resulted in asking his wife to forgive him; he promised to behave 
and to report to the probation office of the court. The wife gladly 
forgave him and the party left the jail. 

\^'hen the home teacher arrived home at 7 :45, she found two 
mothers waiting for her on the steps. One had a son who had 
been arrested for stealing ; the other wanted to arrange that her two 
children's lunches should t)e paid for by the week at the school 
cafeteria. When both cases had been temporarily disposed of, the 
home teacher had arrived at the end of her official day. 

A Typical Monthly Report of Home Teacher. 

The Home Teacher during the month of March, made sixty- 
two calls in the neighborhood, took thirty-five children to the differ- 
ent clinics in the city for various ailments. Arrangements were 
made for eight adenoid and tonsil operation^ where children's con- 
dition was a great hindrance in their advancement. Parents had 
to be convinced that it was absolutely necessary. This involved 
several calls. 

A mothers' class averaging about twelve in attendance met 
weekly with the Home Teacher and studied English, proper feed- 
ing, care and cleanliness of their children. 

Two letters of introduction were written for men in the dis- 
trict to procure work. One girl was placed in a good position at 
a good salary. 

Held three conferences with the Associated Charities' visitors 
regarding the families in the district on their list to secure thorough 
co-operation. Reported two new families in dire need and imme- 
diately procured aid. 

One mother, whose condition is hopeless, was cheered by pro- 
curing a wonderful wheel chair in which she is taken out daily to 

63 



enjoy fresh air and sunshine. The children of this unfortunate 
one are being cared for in our nursery so as to help the mother in 
every possible way. 

Two sales of clothing, donated by six Hollywood schools, were 
held. The amount of money ($12.50) was divided between the 
Penny Kitchen fund, much depleted, and securing material for the 
Sewing Department. 

Milk and crackers are served daily to thirty anaemic children, 
at 10:00 A. M., under the supervision of the Home Teacher, this 
milk being paid for by the Hollywood schools also. 

The Home Teacher, devoting half time to the big problems 
among the foreign women and children of that district, has tried 
to meet the immediate needs of the community : 

First — By visiting the homes. 

Second — By caring for the children's physical condition. 

Third — By guiding girls of the adolescent age when sex hygiene 
is so needed. 

Fourth — By procuring work for mothers and fathers of large 
families. 

Fifth — By giving immediate help in buying provisions when no 
other way was possible. 

Sixth — By co-operation with all welfare workers of our com- 
munity in elevating and educating our foreign mothers. 

Seventh — By helping these people to help themselves, and thus 
evade pauperizing them. 

Number of calls 166 

Children to the clinic 152 

Classes in Sex Hygiene for adolescent girls from B5, A5, 86, 
A6, and all ungraded girls — 75 girls in all. 

Subjects discussed: 

1. The Ideal Woman. 

2. Personal Cleanliness. 

3. Character. 

4. Heredity. 

5. Reproduction in Plant and Animal Life. 

6. Infectious Diseases. 

7. A Pure Mind. 

8. Womanhood. 

9. Motherhood. 

10. Care of the Home. 

11. Bathing a Baby. 

12. Bed Making. 

13. Bandaging. 

64 




t-i a) 



O O 



?^ n! 



^ O 






O 1^ 






Ei"^ 



> OS 



ex; 



5-= 



Number of people for whom I have actually procured work — 5. 

Procured from Hollywood Schools funds to the amount of 
$28.25 to serve as emergency money for our school. 

Distribution of clothing to needy children; devoted one after- 
noon every week for this work. 

Two crippled children had casts made — one was operated on 
at the Children's Hospital ; all these charity cases. 

Conference at least once every two weeks with District 
Nurses, District Supervisor of County Charities, and Homer Tober- 
man Clinic, where so many of our cases are handled. 

A list of children who are tubercular has been compiled, and 
plans are well on foot for a camping trip of three weeks in the 
-mountains, under the care of our school nurse, where these little 
afflicted children will be given every chance to fight the dreaded 
disease. 

Hollywood Schools have promised to finance this entirely. Veg- 
etables from the school gardens will be furnished the camp all dur- 
ing the time. Milk, eggs, and the best of food with rest and plenty 
of good fresh air, will be the chief means of combating the tubercu- 
lar tendencies. 

One case handled recently might be a fair sample of the 
problems: which the Home Teacher has had to handle. 

A patron of the school, the father of five children, was injured 
in a cement plant and was taken to the hospital where he remained 
for two weeks. The family in the meantime, with the bread winner 
gone, were starving. The mother, who was expecting another little 
one within a few months, was unable to work. This was all brought 
to the Home Teacher, who immediately went to the home, learned 
all the conditions, names of physicians treating injuried man, the 
company for whom he worked, and all necessary data. After much 
efifort direct conference with one of the officers of the company was 
obtained, the result being that the family have received the weekly 
check to sustain them while the father is incapacitated. 

PAGES FRO^I "MY EXPERIENCE AS HOME TEACHER." 

My initial service occurred while in regular employ as an ele- 
mentary teacher at the Bridge Street School, where amongst the 
twenty-six dififerent nationalities there is a goodly proportion of 
Russian, Hungarian, and Polish Jews. To these did I pay many a 
call in behalf of the school. Speaking their language, my suggestions 
would naturally have more weight. Here in the home of the immi- 
grant, where adjustment to our mode of living is the most vital 

66 



problem, where more than elsewhere it is incumbent upon us to 
teach children and not academic subjects, I held many consultations 
with the mothers concerning the welfare of their children. I was 
most particularly impressed with the lamentable lack of under- 
standing and sympathy toward the mother on the part of the 
remainder of the family. She serves tirelessly a husband and chil- 
dren whose diminishing respect for her is well seasoned with pity 
and almost scorn at her backwardness. She is no longer the head 
of the family. Hence, can we wonder at the high proportion of 
delinquency which occurs among the children of foreign parentage, 
when the natural social order with the home as its corner-stone 
is reversed. When that good old commandment is ignored, one 
of the ten upon which is based the laws of civilization, "Honor 
Thy Father and Mother," it behooves us to strike at the root of the 
evil and educate the mother that she may keep pace with her 
children and retain the due dignity of her position in the household. 

One little mother came to me in tears quoting her little son 
as having said, "I want a mother like Johnnie's, who can write 
excuses in English to his. teacher. I'm ashamed of you." And 
right there she took her first lesson, that of writing her name. 
Others joined her and we organized a little class which I taught 
after school hours. Then my principal, Miss McEachan, one of the 
most socially minded women it has been my pleasure to know, 
relieved me of my class of children one afternoon a week and 
this time was also devoted to the women. Not long after this a 
delegation from the Cornwell District which adjoins ours, besieged 
me, reproaching us with partiality. '"Are we but step-children of 
this America, that we get no lessons in English, as do the ladies 
of Bridge Street?" After consulting the Cornwell principal, we 
met for classes from 3:30 to 5:30 P. M. In spite of the incon- 
venience of preparing the evening meal in the morning, our classes 
thrived. -Then the Board of Education granted me two afternoons 
of liberty from my classes of children and this time was devoted 
to the Cornwell women's classes. Then were we veritable "Wander- 
ing Jews" for there was no room vacant in the building at that time 
and we were glad to pitch camp and spread our paraphernalia in any 
available spot. 

Then it occurred to me that the 20th Street School should have 
a class for women as the Jewish population prevails there. I con- 
sulted the principal and he responded, as do all splendid men with 
a vision. I placed posters in the meat markets and grocery stores 
and engaged every group of women in conversation on one pretext 
or another, and incidentally mentioned the proposed classes. 1 
sent notices home to the parents and held a mass meeting in the 

67 



Auditorium, where 60 women signed in Yiddish or by proxy appeal- 
ing for these classes. This together with an application for the 
position as Home Teacher I planted in the office of Dr. Shiels, the 
Superintendent, and betook myself away for a vacation. On my 
return I found that the little seed had sprouted and blossomed 
under the approval of the Board of Education and I was relieved 
entirely of academic work with the children. 

As a Home Teacher I acted as a link between the school and 
the home. My position was in the principal's office, where any 
matter of malnutrition or attendance was referred to me. This 
served as an open sesame to the home. As the confidence of the 
home was won, my suggestions concerning sanitation, diatetics, 
hygiene and child welfare could be tactfully made. 

Every agency operating for human betterment was appealed 
to. My aim was to act as an exchange between these and the 
needy ; not to duplicate their work but rather to supplement them. 
And I cannot speak too highly of the co-operation with which I 
met, especially during the epidemic when we did not know where 
first to turn, where there was but one cry, "Help, ere we perish !'" 
Then destitution, neglect and suffering prevailed and every one 
physically fit was overworked to the breaking point. 

Now this sounds very optimistic, as though the Home Teacher's 
path was one strewn with roses, bordered by grateful patrons who 
arise and called her blessed. But I assure you it is not so. Too 
often her pet scheme upon which she had worked for weeks falls 
through. Just when you have induced Mr. Stein to realize that his 
motherless daughter is not safe running the streets after school, 
that she should be placed in a home along with her little brothers 
who are showing signs of delinquency, that she is too young to pre- 
pare the evening meal and to be trusted too near the fire ; and 
when you have found a home that would accept them at the rate 
his wage permits, then appears upon the horizon an interested rela- 
tive who sweeps away your entire structure, by telling him that it is 
all nonsense and that the children are all right as they are. And 
you must build all over again. Then husbands will be vendors and 
have their irregular dinner hours and keep their wives at home, 
and babies will get sick at the most inopportune times, and, too, 
women will deviate from the path of ambition and we must be on 
guard, ever cheerful, ever encouraging, to keep the class full. 
Then babies must accompany their mothers to the classes and we 
must welcome them though the noise be intense. At the 20th 
Street School, where our classes are the largest, three organizations, 
the Council of Jewish Women, the Jewish Alliance, and the B'Nai 

68 



Brith Lodge, each contributed $10.00 towards the salary of a girl 
to care for the babies. My classes were so heavy that an Americani- 
zation teacher, Miss Sophie -Sadicoff. was assigned to reheve me. 

So T could say briefly that the duties of the Home Teacher 
occur in case of : 

1. Chronic absence or tardiness. She will strive to 'find the 
cause and relieve conditions. 

2. Urkemptness, due to poverty, slovenliness or illness of 
mother. 

3. Immorality or unmorality. 

4. Create a closer bond between school and the home. 

5. Reconstruct home conditions . when necessary and render 
it self-maintaining and self-respecting. 

6. Educate toward cleanliness in the home. 

7. Stimulate class attendance in both day and night school. 

8. Find employment. 

9. Act as an exchange JDetween need and relief through agencies. 
10. Stimulate good citizenship. 

This year I made the acquaintance of about 400 families in 
my three districts. One hundred and fifty women were enrolled 
in my classes. I paid from thirty-five to fifty calls per week, 
visiting in the morning and instructing classes in the afternoons. 
During the epidemic relief was administered in every possible man- 
ner, such as procuring the services of nurses and physicians, plac- 
ing children in homes when the parents were sick, sending patients 
to hospitals, co-operating with charities in case of poverty. Here 
I wish to mention the Federation of Jewish Charities, whose serv- ' 
ices in this crisis were most commendable, though their ranks were 
sadly thinned by death. 

Concerning the classes — there is very little available material 
appropriate for these classes. We have few good texts. However, 
much material can be procured through the different social agencies. 
"The Home Teacher," by Mrs. Amanda Matthews Chase, pub- 
lished by the State Commission of Immigration and Housing; "The 
Better Babies" pamphlet, compiled by The Better Babies Bureau, of 
the Woman's Home Companion ; "The Well Baby Primer," by 
Caroline Hedger ; the California State Board of Health has several 
good pamphlets on Hygiene. 

Our own original lessons are compiled in simple form, mimeo- 
graphed and each woman is given a copy of these to place in her 
folder. 

69 



Though trouble of every conceivable kind is brought to the 
door of the Home Teacher, often a gleam of humor does find its 
way through the darkness, especially in the class room. One lit- 
tle old lady was certain she was too old to learn, but when I sug- 
gested that she merely learn to write her name, an inspiration came 
to her. 3he confided in me her embarrassment at having to sign 
her checks at the bank with a cross, since she was unable to write 
her name. At the close of the lesson she signed a check with a capi- 
tal "C" in lieu of the usual cross and naturally the check was 
returned, but honored at her appearance at the bank. But the 
next check was also returned, as she had by that time accomplished 
the only feat of adding an "O" to the "C" and again was her appear- 
ance necessary ; and this performance continued until she was able 
to write ''Cohen." Fortunately for her, her name was not Leibo- 
witz or Wrottenberg, or she would still be making pilgrimages to 
the bank. 

At another time a little lady who felt that she was due for 
promotion to the next highest group, was assigned to read an article 
in Current Events on "The Fall of the German Empire." This she 
read with startling rapidity as the Russian alphabet closely resembles 
the English. But when I asked her to translate, she began this 
way : "There was a German woman, a very good looking woman, 
who — " Here I stopped her in amazement and had her re-read and 
re-transpose, word for word, and when she came to the word 
"Empire" she explained, "When I went to the movies last night, 
Theda Bara was playing and the children told me she was an 
empire." 

I rejoice in this country of ours which renders such oppor- 
'tunities for her citizens and would-be-citizens and I rejoice in the 
courage of these dear little pioneer mothers who, transplanted from 
their native land, brave all ridicule, work a few hours later into the 
night, that they may hold the respect and confidence of their little 
ones, that they may guide their children to a better manhood and 
womanhood. 

Report of One Home Teacher's Activities from September, 1918, 

to June, 1919. 

Visits : 

Concerning attendance of children at day school 186 

Concerning cleanliness and sanitation of home 91 

Concerning illness in the home 62 

Concerning attendance at adult classes 119 

Concerning mal-nutrition of children 16 

70 



Concerning cases of social discipline 39 

Concerning employment 10 

Concerning state aid 5 

Concerning clinic treatments ^ 8 

Concerning neglect and desertion 12 

Concerning simple friendly calls 25 

Total - 575 

Teaching of classes for foreign women, in the afternoon ; total 

weeks 23 

Cases referred to the county charities 6 

Cases referred to Federated Jewish Charities 10 

Calls for district nurses 19 

Calls for paid nurses 35 

Calls for district doctors - 13 

Salvation Army aid - 3 

Clothes given 30 

Appeal for state aid 10 

Appeal for summer vacation (Soc. for prevention of tubercu- 
losis) - 12 

Cases non-employment relieved - 10 

Appeals to Morals Efficiency Commission 2 

Placed in hospitals 4 

Appeals to Juvenile Protective Association 12 

Insane placed in hospital 1 

Placed with Home Finding Society 3 

Total number women enrolled in all classes 153 

Average number visits per week 24 

Co-operation : 

(1) With Branch Library in establishing clubs for young 
people. 

(2) With B'Nai Bridi Lodge and Council of Jewish Women in 
maintaining nursery for children while mothers are in 
class. 

(3) With P. T. A. in use of emergency fund. 

(4) With every possible agency during the influenza epidemic. 

SUMMARY 

Sometimes the air of definition can be cleared as well by 
negation as affirmation. Perhaps a function so intangibly definite 
as the business of the home teacher can be reduced to a partial 
simplification at least, by a statement of what it is not. 

71 



She is not a variety of glorified errand boy whose duties inckide 
all the odds and ends of tasks not included in some other teacher's 
assignments ; by some inexplicable paradox she is, however, the 
"emergency trouble man" for the school and the community. 

She is not an attendance officer in the nationally accepted sense 
of that term. It is frequently true that some question concerning 
habitual absence or tardiness of children formulates her initial 
errand to the home but she has small vision of the legal and social 
purpose of her professional existence if her succeeding visits find 
no other justification. 

She is not an official "Paul Pry" warranted in violating any 
of the natural reserves and reservations of the home. Her own 
delicately instinctive sense of the rights of others, — particularly of 
others who have been by chance placed at some social disadvantage, 
must be her only manual of her own rights and obligations. 

She is as an institution no more particularly adapted to a 
school-community largely foreign than she is to any other kind of 
district. Indeed a home teacher compact of constructive imagina- 
tion, tremendous energy and limitless patience, is perhaps the only 
piece of formal machinery with which our over-specialized school 
systems can be fitted for the electrification into some measure of 
social self-expression those school-communities which have per- 
mitted themselves to be organized and standardized and convention- 
alized into some one of the numerous modern manifestations of 
social creeping paralysis and locomotor ataxia. A so-called Ameri- 
can industrial district, or any district of working parents where 
children run wild on the streets, or apartment house district, or con- 
gested neighborhood of too-cheap, rented shacks stands in much 
greater need of neighborhood mothering than an upstanding, thrifty 
group of independent home-owners who happen to have been born 
in another land. It is not so much the integrity of the home life 
of the foreigner that is threatened by "the present day social cata- 
clysm" as the American home of the third and fourth generation. 

The home teacher herself is not a standardized, conventional- 
ized institution. The general principles which she must follow are 
stated by law but their specific application varies with the individual 
characteristics of the neighborhood she works in. 

She is not a separate, single, social entity or agency. She is a 
part of the school system. She is, furthermore, as definitely a part 
of the individual school corps, and as definitely responsible to her 
principal, as any school-room teacher. It is a sorry case, to be 
sure, when she chances to be placed with a principal myopic in 
social vision, but the difficulties must l)e worked out zvith that prin- 
ci])al and not without the principal and tlTc school. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

"The Cottage Idea." 

Not only has the home teacher with her peripatetic possibiH- 
ties for establishing close contacts been developed according to this 
new social philosophy but along with her has grown up a string of 
small cottages, each located in the heart of more-or-less non-social 
foreign groups and each similar to the surrounding homes. The 
comparatively elegant and large school buildings have proved over- 
whelmingly alien to the great majority of foreign neighborhoods. 
The house-mothers especially must be drawn to them gradually. 
So they have been attracted first to the modest, often dingy, little 
rooms or houses, where they slowly learn to come out from their shell 
of fear and distrust and heavy hatred of all the untoward circum- 
stances in which many have found themselves. School authorities 
have not found a method of recording these slow awakenings to a 
comprehension of the real neighborly intent (despite all the evidence 
to the contrary) of the great bulk of our native American groups 
toward their foreign neighbors. Neither do school registers show 
any tabulations of names of isolated persons who have learned to 
laugh and to play with their neighbors in these small, intimate, 
unforbidding gatherings. There are no columns provided for report- 
ing the number of musical instruments with pronouncable and unpro- 
nouncable names that are hesitatingly drawn from their "hiding 
places, of songs and music shyly offered as contributions to the 
general joy of the day, of costumes dragged from the seclusion of 
foreign-looking trunks and boxes to adorn graceful unfamiliar 
dances trod by sadly unaccustomed feet, of exquisite pieces of 
hand work timidly shown by their makers and joyously exhibited 
by the teacher, of cases of unemployment relieved so that care and 
anxiety may be driven away at least for the minute, of the increas- 
ing number of wandering families attracted to the notion of a per- 
manent abiding place, of lively small community centers thriving 
and functioning, joyously, entirely unaware of the vast amount of 
pamphleteering about them and their kind, of civic instruction by 
practical use of civic institutions instead of lectures or lessons, — 
of all these and the many others of the sort no official record is 
possible. Yet these are the commonplaces of the day's work for 
the Americanization teacher despite the fact that her days are 
dogged and her nights haunted by the necessity of producing in a 
given group at some moment a minimum of fifteen of these shy alien 
friends. Laws may compel a formal attendance in classes of cer- 
tain alien groups for certain parts of the year but without the leaven 
of teachers inherently gifted in this sort of service the fruits will 

73 




This unusual photograph has caught somewhat of the joyous eagerness 
learning and teaching that marks a good class for non-English students. 



Reprinted from the Report on the Los Angeles Summer Experiment, 1917. 

74 



be exactly what the fruits of compulsion alone always are. Com- 
pulsions that eliminate the possibility of comparison and discussion 
of the two points of view — the American's and the immgrant's — are 
fraught with peril in these dubious days that have followed the war. 

So these gathering places have been devised as a common meet- 
ing ground for the simple processes by which human folk become 
acquainted. Ten in number, located in the center of some isolated 
district, they have attempted to work out a few of the initial steps in 
the solution of a new problem in educational endeavor. As a means 
to the more complete assimilation of the nation's undigested popu- 
lation they are valuable ; they are an equally effective agent in the 
democratization of the native born. 

The P. T. A. Cottage has been sponsored and financed since 
May 12, 1919, by the City Federation of P. T. Associations. Mrs. 
Charles Grey. City President, and Mrs. H. D. Graul, Chairman of 
Educational Committee, have given freely of interest, time, effort 
and advice. 

Social values are with difficulty translated into figures ; never- 
theless, the following collatioh of facts seems significant : 

Total enrollment to Sept. 10, 1919 87 Adults 

Average attendance showing increase by weeks : 

1. Week of May 16 3 Adults 

2. Week of June 20.. _ - -27 Adults 

3. Week of August 2 (Summer term) '... 40 Adults 

Total families represented in enrollment 75 

Number of families within easy access of cottage, about 125 

Proportion of families reached by cottage -.. 3/5 

Total expenditure $362 

Expenditure for equipment not to be repeated $112 

Future average expenditure for rent, light and small incidentals. 

per 2-hr. lesson, on basis of above average attendance 15 

Cost of cottage per school day $4.85 

Number of lessons taught 1096 

Average cost per lesson $.2o 

Visits made by teachers : 

Friendly visits 200 

School business visits 206 

Visits to sick pupils 10 

Total square feet of floor space in four small rooms of cottage.. 275 
This one experiment in the application of the Cottage Idea has 
been sufficiently convincing of its validity to warrant the associa- 
tions in assuming the sponsorship of two more cottages, each in a 
neighborhood of strongly individual and widely varying charac- 
teristics. 

75 



Another cottage in located twelve blocks from the nearest car 
line in an isolated mixed foreign group. Situated in a strip of 
territory neglected by both city and county authorities because of 
a joint jurisdiction, it presents an interesting numerical statement of 
an immeasurable social service for one year. 

Cost for one year, rent, etc $ 25 

Cost for salary, part year 250 

Cost for cupboards, lights (donated) 25 

$300 

Families within easy walking distance. ..- 55 

Adults -. - - 123 

Total enrollment of women — no regular evening classes 35 

Community gatherings 20 

Layettes 22 

Dresses, children's Dozen 7 

Miscellaneoiis pieces -. ....Dozen 10 

Stockings repaired Dozen 13 

Quilts 40 

Employment bureau for community — positions secured 158 

An excerpt from one of the informal reports of one of the 
Americanization teachers in one of the cottages repeats the key 
words of successful work of this type, — close neighborhood contacts 
and sincere co-operation : 

"P. T. A. Cottage opened May 22, 1919. The first woman came in 
response to a postal. She came to tell us she could not come. The postals 
may have advertised the school, but this one woman was the only pupil 
they brought directly, and they did not fasten her down. In my scouting, 
I saw many of these postals used as mural decorations. The Italians 
refused to mix with the Mexicans, so the school was Mexican until the 
summer time. 

"Two faithful women next door were the next pupils, and they and 
the man of the family have been a, substantial foundation of the school. 
So much dependence do we place in them, we have given the janitorship of 
the school into their keeping — $5.00 per month being the amount of our trust 
in them. The women did not take enthusiastically to an afternoon class, 
so we changed to a morning hour, with better results, until the canning 
season, after which I had to double my "scouting" efforts. For a month 
we had quite a steady attendance, eight being the average. 

"The evening class grew steadily, and while I did not do regular 
'scouting' after the first few weeks, I always went to see any that were 
absent for even one evening. 

"The men of my school are not more intelligent than the women, but 
they have had more opportunities than the women and they also have more 
ambition. They are rather shy and the nearest telephone pole (behind it — 
not up it) was a safe harbor for some of them until they could muster 
the courage to come into the house. The only real unhappiness there has 

76 



been in the school has been the distress over losing their beloved Miss 
Mackay and the genuine grief of two women and one man when the supply 
of red covers for the lesson books they were making gave out and I had to 
give them brown ones. One woman did not come again for several nights, 
and the other came with tears in her eyes. The man was mad and said the 
brown was 'triste.' Finally the principal supplied plenty of red ones, and 
peace has returned but I still have an over-supply of brown covers. 

"The social instinct of the Mexicans needs to be developed. They 

have not greatly enjoyed the Friday night entertainments we have had for 

them. The Italian class, organized in the summer, takes more interest in 

the Friday night fun and will monopolize it if the Mexicans allow them to. 

"This particular group of Mexican women do not care for quilt- 
making, but are interested in making clothes for their children. From 
scraps and old skirts and dresses they have made three aprons, four dresses 
for prospective infants, six for children from two to seven years; two 
waists and a dress for women have been finished from partially made gar- 
ments, and one boy's waist and one pair of pants have been made. 

"The men and women both are a frequently bathed, clean-shirted and 
non-odorous lot of people, and are much cleaner than their homes are. 

"We have had three births, one scandal, two elopements, and several 
pafties. , 

"The Italian women were evidently not ready for a class, for they 
did not attend the afternoon class formed for them in the summer. 

"For every hour of teaching I have done I have spent from a half to 
three-quarters of an hour visiting in the homes or preparing old materials 
to make into garments or fitting up the cottage or in janitor work." 



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CHAPTER IX. 
Classes for Adults in Industrial Plants. 

In the development of industrial classes it has not been easy 
to hold to the gospel of simplicity and actual service. Nothing is 
easier to accomplish than the process of crowding large groups of 
non-English-speaking laborers into classes unless it is the more 
silent process by which those groups rapidly disappear in a time 
too short to permit anything resembling an educational process. It 
has been difificult to remember insistently that any adult educational 
process is one of habit substitution ins'tead of habit formation as 
with children. There has been temptation to mistake the mere 
accumulation of numbers of persons for the long, tedious, labor- 
some process by which an adult wnth tired body and untrained 
mind adds a second language to his mother tongue. The short- 
sighted demand upon us for a showing of numbers in our registers 
places the emphasis of a teacher's interest on the wrong phase of 
her work. VVe have been well nigh compelled to resort to aggre- 
gation as a substitute foi^ ^education. 

Furthermore, the matter of the industrial complexes involved 
is not so simple in Los Angeles as it seems to be in many cities if 
cme may judge from printed reports of factory classes. Our pecu- 
liar rotations of seasonal employment and unemployment; the tran- 
sient and semi-transient character of both our laboring and our 
leisure population; the widely-varying practices of 'liiring and fir- 
ing" ; the comparative absence of immense industrial centers ; the 
lack of "slum" districts in the sense used to describe that conge;sted, 
poverty-driven condition in older cities; the comparative mildness 
of our semi-tropic climate and its relation to living and laboring con- 
ditions; the presence, not to say omnipresence, of the two large 
foreign groups peculiarly and locally our own with the ticklish na- 
tional and local questions involved in their vicinage ; the wholesale 
transfer of whole groups of workmen from one trade to another 
(the local jewelry and watch-repairing shops are weeks behind 
repair schedules because their expert workmen have entered machine 
shops of one sort and another) — all these with many other similar 
local peculiarities have precluded methods of procedure described 
in the myriad of pamphlets dropping on us from every imaginable 
source — federal, national, state, public, private. This "turnover" 
not only of labor but of whole bodies of population is a thing too 
vast and is due to causes too remote and deep-seated to be touched 
by the inauguration of a few classes in vocational training or 
English-to-foreigners. 

79 



In the main it has seemed best to attack first and frankly the 
two-fold racial situation because the Mexicans and Japanese out- 
number and outweigh in economic significance the other laboring 
groups and to advance upon them (1) where these two types of 
unskilled labor work and (2) where they Hve. So the approach 
proceeded, as has been said elsewhere : 

1. To laboring camps, temporary and permanent. 

a. Transportation companies. 

b. Fruit picking, drying and canning. 

c. Nut picking and drying. 

2. To factories where policies of the employer and organiza- 

tions of labor tend to stabilize the roll of employees. 

3. To large boarding houses of homeless laboring men. 

4. To laundries — an industrial service always large and 

steady and hence nearly permanent in a tourist and 
transient population. 

5. To groups of market gardeners and flower growers. 

It is easy to wax vastly but indefinitely sentimental over the 
duty of employer to employee, the strong to the weak and all that ; 
it is not always easy to see just how that duty can be accomplished 
without positive social and economic injury to both helper and 
helped. 

A study of the pay rolls of several of the large plants shows 
in the war period an astounding turnover of foreign-speaking labor 
that explains to the initiated not only some of the mysteries of high 
cost of production but also the folly of investing either an em- 
ployer's time and money or a school department's time and money 
in classes in English-to-foreigners, or any other subjects for adult 
study. The relatively large decrease in the number of homes pur- 
chased by persons with foreign names is another interesting bit of 
data useful in the estabhshment of adult industrial classes. A 
study of the name-lists of communicants in various religious organ- 
izations reveals an almost incredible shift recently in population- 
groups. 

So it has seemed and still seems important to discover the most 
stable and the most needy groups — or at least the most stable loca- 
tion of a group — and to establish there centers of radiation which 
shall vary e'asily as conditions change. If that center is in a large 
laundry reaching out after the men and young people at noon hour 
it is obviously a "factory class" ; if it is in a tiny room or building 
somewhere intimately near their home where it reaches the house- 
mother of these same workers, it classifies itself officially for persons 
who demand card-indexes and figures and classifications as a "camp 



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class" or a '"cottage class" ; if it is an evening center in a school 
house it becomes a ''night school". As a matter of fact it is all 
part of one tremendous task : the training of all the adult mem- 
bers of a community— American and foreign-born — into the habit 
of continuing their education in whatever lines and for whatever 
period of time shall suit best their immediate needs. 

Our experience in the industrial field has been unique in one 
respect — and that an important one ; every class that once has been 
started still exists with the exception of two instances ; the one in a 
factory which burned will be carried on again in the new plant 
under improved conditions, the other in a plant that was dis- 
continued. 

"I made my first visit to the paper factory class on September 11th, 
1918. I found abovit forty Mexican women, some of whom were entirely 
ignorant of the English language, others only slightly proficient. All, how- 
ever, were willing to learn — even eager. I am always glad when if is a 
Latin race I have to deal with; their reactions are so spontaneous and 
refreshing. I also found an office force of four young women — nice inter- 
esting American girls who looked at me in astonishment and kept some- 
what aloof for some days — because I was a teacher, perhaps, and worse 
still, a teacher. of Mexicans. Beside the indifference of the office force 
(for which no one can be blamed but us people who are sympathetic and 
do not spread our gospel far and wide), I found some rather appalling 
working conditions. But those are only effects ; education deals with 
causes. •= 

"On September 16th, 1918, at 12 o'clock. Miss Dennick and I arrived 
ready for work. We found that the women ate their lunches on the fourth 
floor. Some sat in their dressing-room — which is a gracious name for the 
place indicated; and others sat outside the dressing-room in the corner; yet 
others sat on a long sorting table and on great piles of waste paper. We 
decided to catch them in their haunts. We gave them paper and asked them 
to sign their names. They shook their heads. They could not v/rite. Some 
could not read in their own language. We had indeed an interesting piece 
of work. Miss Dennick looked at me. Did I have the courage to shoulder 
such a task? Yes. Let us go to that big box filled with magazines and 
find some bright colored pictures. A catalogue! Fine! A seed catalogue. 
Red tomatoes, green peas and big juicy oranges ! Now some paste, and 
those long sheets of white paper over there. In ten minutes we had a 
chart made with the names of the objects written under the pictures. Ask 
the floor-manager for a ham.mer and a few nails. He's a kind Spanish boy ! 
We nailed the chart on the wall and began. 

'"Now girls, this is an orange.' I pointed gracefully to the chart. 
They saw the grace but failed to get the connection between my sentence 
and their own conception 'naranja.' After much repetition and much 
sitting on the floor so they could see my lips, I found them approximating 
the sounds I made. 

"After we had made many charts, we began to wonder what in the 
name of Americanization Mexican women do beside cook and eat and 
wear. We thought of pie. Every good American woman knows and loves 
pie. Apple pie. No? Ah, lemon pie. No. Well, peach pie. No. Custard 

82 




LOMA DRi\ !.•: SUAIAiEl; CLASS, 1918 
HOSE CO. NO. 4 

The men of this group are originally from the rural .sections of the South 
and have had little or no school advantages. Seven have attended school 
about two years in all; two have had the equivalent of sixth grade work; 
three have never been to school. Only six could add a column of figures or 
write their names legibly. 

As firemen these men had a great deal of spare time which they usually 
wasted playing such games as checkers. When the idea of a summer class 
was suggested, every man seized it enthusiastically. 

83 



pie. Oh custard pie! Do you like custard pie? Yes, I like custard pie. 
And so we began our conversation in English. 

"At first we had about seventeen women every noon. Now we have 
sometimes as many as twenty-five, varying with the number of names on the 
payroll. They bring their lunches instead of going home now. Sometimes 
they even neglect little personal duties to stay for the class. Last week at five 
minutes to one o'clock a young girl left the class very abruptly. I did not 
call her back. At ten minutes past one she came running breathlessly across 
lots stopping occasionally to pull on one poor stringless shoe that threatened 
to stay behind. She smiled at me. But her eyes were dark with fright. 
'What time? What time?' she asked nervously. 

"I showed her my watch. I have discovered that I shall like nothing 
better than to be called, as one of my girls did call me, 'A teacher of the 
Mexican people.' " 

CHAPTER X. 

Some Fundamental Needs. 

One corollary derived from a study of the camp class and the 
cottage class and their work is the urgent need of official recogni- 
tion of the teacher's activities as social visitor, outside the assigned 
class hours. Her services in interpreting the public school to the 
home, the home to the school, the alien home to the American home 
and the American ideal to the foreigner are of inestimable value, 
especially in times of public tension like the present. It is im- 
portant that this delicate duty be entrusted only to capable persons — 
honest, loyal, quietly forceful, purposive, intelligently sympathetic, 
constructively imaginative, unselfish. She is difficult to discover — 
her rare value should be recognized when it is found, for it is 
through the quiet, intensive pressure of this variety of public school 
work that real Americanization — both of Americans and foreign 
born — is actually accomplished, and not through the blare and noise 
of the parade and "big show". 

Many of our blunders in organization and method have, up to 
date, been due to a wrong social emphasis — to a faulty choice of 
essentials. The present national filurry of sentiment over Amei- 
icanization throws the searchlight on the immigrant who is to be 
assimilated ; its rays should be sent instead mercilessly on the mass 
into which he is to be assimilated. The foreigner is a helpless 
human atom in the environment for which not he but we are re- 
sponsible. All sorts of well-intentioned persons have proposed all 
sorts of things to do tQ him; many kindly souls have proposed many 
generous things to do for him; a conference of real workers who 
have been his neighbors for years must develop a constructive pro- 
gram of things to do along zinfh him for the good of us all. This 

84 



proposition that we all, foreigner and native born, work out our 
social salvation by a natural process of mutual give and take brings 
to light a second recommendation sure to come from a conference of 
the toilers in the fields ; namely, that the immigrant and the illiterate 
be taken into the confidence of those who are proposing to do things 
to him. 

This second essential bias that must be given to American 
national public opinion involves deep issues. Legislative bodies, 
Americanization committees, educators, chautauqua speakers, who 
not, can easily meet together in pleasant places — at an expensive 
dinner or luncheon, perchance — for the purpose of devising highly 
profitable social or political stunts to be performd by a hypothetical 
immigrant or group of immigrants for their own peculiar benefit ; 
many such gatherings have so functioned under the impression that 
they have contributed much to the sum total of immigrant welfare. 
On the other hand the laborers are few who are willing to learn 
the immigrant viewpoint, collective and individual, with a view to 
a literal, actual adjustment of social weights and measures. In 
the last analysis the law of self-activity holds good. The immigrant 
must assimilate himself. We must all work out together, through a 
common understanding from which the humblest may not be ex- 
cluded, an amalgamation of the social activities of us all into a 
social entity which shall include us all. The immigrant himself 
then shall sit in those national and local conferences which decide 
the social and educational doses to be administered to him and to 
us ; the dosage he recommends for his American neighbor may not 
always be palatable but it is almost sure to be salutary. Public 
school opinion must learn to rate him and his contributions at a 
true value. 

It is indeed true that "The schools unaided will never be able 
to work out a complete program for the assimilation of foreigners, 
because a foreigner cannot be made a good American citizen merely 
by a few hours' attendance at a night school. It is necessary that 
a rather high level of public opinion and public interest and sympa- 
thetic understanding of the alien's diificulties be cultivated ; that 
such public agencies as boards of health, police departments, social 
welfare commissions, public employment agencies, organizations of 
women's clubs, civic clubs, etc., should, in their own activities, 
serve as educational agencies." 

The present weakness in Americanization work is the lack of 
a program and national leadership. Too many voices are crying 
in the wilderness. Americanization is a side-line, an addendum, an 
afterthought, a compromise, in too many different departments of 
educational, social, and governmental activity. The work as a form 

. 85 



of educational endeavor is pioneer, uncharted, experimental ; it 
must be crystalized into definite, substantial expression by a person 
or by several persons who are fitted by training, temperament, ex- 
perience, and their own willingness to undertake the stupendous 
task of formulating the popular conception of Americanization. The 
inconceivably long and difficult process of amalgamation as a self- 
conscious national development through the years to come can 
hardly be accomplished without adequate direction and guidance 
from some central authority with a single, certain voice. 

There is not even a philosophy of Americanization or democra- 
tization, much of the stuff bearing that label being concerned with 
what shall be done for or to the immigrant by instruction or philan- 
thropy and very little with the idea of what we must do for our- 
selves so that the things he sees and knows and experiences— and 
these constitute by far the greater part of his Americanization — 
may be constructive factors in that process. There are many cities 
which are talking about what they could do for the foreigners when 
the best thing they could do for these people would be to make 
themselves clean, decent communities. 

In order to locate Americanization properly as a comprehensive 
task of elementary adult education, an intelligent, common view- 
point is necessary on the part of those persons who assume the posi- 
tion of leadership. At present it is possible to find in all the 
jumbled and transient mass of matter printed about Americaniza- 
tion all too few coherent, practicable, and suggestive programs of 
educational procedure. Even a tentative program would furnish 
a foothold for teachers and persons whose business is the training 
of teachers ; it would offer a starting point for future discussion 
and growth ; it would tend to eliminate the traditional, the academic, 
the sentimental, the unessential, the petty, the poHtical, the unpro- 
fessional, the casual, the selfish. It must be built on a recognition 
of a new world era in education with the new need of a new attitude 
of mind to meet the baffling conditions of a new day. 

Elemental and almost overwhelming is the necessity for an 
awakening of the entire educational force of the country to a com- 
prehensive, concerted, and effective attack upon the detailed prob- 
lems of adult elementary education. University and high school 
education for adults is granted in theory and practice ; elementary 
education for adults is denied at every administrative and instruc- 
tional step. The prevalent silly faith — strong and ever present— in 
the naturalization process for non-Americans as an all-sufficient 
answer to the demand for assimilation of our foreign-born into the 
body of safe and sane citizens — and the foreign-born form only one 



group of our citizens who stand in desperate need of education 

is only one single illustrative remnant of a pre-war social apathy. 
The inadequate financial and administrative provision in school sys- 
tems, rural and urban, for classes and schools for adults, coupled 
with the general conviction in the national teaching stafif that schools 
are for children and for children only, prevents anything like satis- 
factory experimentation in adult elementary education even in a 
small local and isolated way. 

We need, too, in universities and normal schools, organized de- 
partments and courses designed to lead teachers in the direction of 
various phases of this work. A frank abandoning pf pre-war. 
scholastic, idealistic courses in the social sciences should be fol- 
lowed by the equally frank establishment of courses utilitarian, ten- 
tative, and realistic. The recognition of the new and unique field of 
education by the administrative authorities of institutions devoted 
to the training of teachers and other social workers would reveal. 

however, another great lack — namely, persons to conduct these train- 
ing courses for the persons who shall in turn train teachers. In 
this business something more stable and specific than a highly de- 
veloped social sense, or a fervent desire to serve humanity, or an 
equally fervent desire to hold a position, or a highly developd polit- 
ical sense, or a tendency to demagoguery, is essential. Conferences 
of trained leaders could develop a public opinion fairly well in- 
formed concerning the matter of adult elementary educaticjn. We 
are learning at a tremendous cost exactly the points in which pub- 
lic opinion in a government like ours must be brought to consider 
its own education. Public opinion moreover must he taught to 
demand the best of quality in personnel, in methodology, in pro- 
fessional attitude not only of the national leaders but of the teach- 
ers to whom the details of immigrant education are entrusted. This 
is no work for weaklings, for worn-out teachers, for decrepit social 
and religious workers, for the society woman interested for the 
moment, for the idly curious, for the politically or socially 
ambitious. 

Strong teachers will empliasize the desperate need of a care- 
fully developed technique of teaching especially in the classes in 
English-to-foreigners and in civics. Our present plight is i)athetic ; 
almost the whole territory remains to be cultivated. All of these 
inadequacies lead to the final one of a chain of deficiencies—the 

87 



disproportionate salaries paid to teachers and leaders in this branch 
of educational work. Immigrant education has so lately emerged 
from a ^emi-philanthropic, almost charitable origin, that its de- 
mands for a high rate of pay for a task requiring a high degree of 
skill and a mastery of a delicate technique make way slowly. 
American public sentiment has been dealing lightly with the prob- 
lem of the foreigner ; it has not yet even lightly considered the neces- 
sity for taking to heart the awful warning in the late figures on 
illiteracy. The present almost hysterical excitement over Amer- 
icanization must be stabilized into a democratic, steady, intelligent, 
concerted educational attack upon ignorance, illiteracy, social isola- 
tion, and their concomitant evils. 




En£;lisli-l< I- foreigners 



eiKncrs iiy incans ul sewiiit 



Reprinted from the Kcport on tlie Los Angeles. Summer Experiment, '917. 

88 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



019 635 757 9 



